A NATURALIST. 95 



NO. IX. 



Those who have only lived in forest countries, where 

 vast tracts are shaded by a dense growth of oak, ash, 

 chestnut, hickory and other trees of deciduous foliage, 

 which present the most pleasing varieties of verdure and 

 freshness, can have but little idea of the effect produced 

 on the feelings by aged forests of pine, composed in great 

 degree of a single species, whose towering summits are 

 crowned with one dark green canopy, which successive 

 seasons find unchanged, and nothing but death causes 

 to vary. Their robust and gigantic trunks rise an hun- 

 dred or more feet high in purely proportioned columns, 

 before the limbs begin to diverge; and their tops, densely 

 clothed with long bristling foliage, intermingle so closely 

 as to allow of but slight entrance to the sun. Hence the 

 undergrowth of such forests is comparatively slight and 

 thin, since none but shrubs and plants that love the shade, 

 can flourish under this perpetual exclusion of the animat- 

 ing and invigorating rays of the great exciter of the 

 vegetable world. Through such forests, and by the 

 merest foot paths in great part, it was my lot to pass 

 many miles almost every day ; and had I not endeavoured 



