34 FOREST CULTURE AND 
sides of the barest rocks until they have found a 
genial soil, however scanty, on the edge of a preci- 
pice. Nature —ever active and laborious, ever wise 
and beneficent —allows the tree thus to live, thus to 
convert the solid bowlders finally into soil, and all the 
time adds unceasingly to the treasures of the domin- 
ions of man. But just as time, with its measured 
terms in fleet course, passes irresistably onward and 
irrevocably away, so also have we to await the ap- 
proaching time, which all our wishes cannot accel- 
erate in its unalterable measure. 
“ Onward its course the present keeps, 
Onward the constant current sweeps, 
Till life is done ; 
And did we judge of time aright, 
The past and future in their flight 
Would be as one, 
Let no one fondly dream again 
_ That hope and all her shadow-train 
Will not decay ; 
Fleeting as were the dreams of old, 
Remembered like a tale that’s told; 
They pass away.” 
LonGFELLOw (from ‘‘ Manrique’’). 
We have, therefore, to await with patience these 
measured terms before the child in its youthful impet- 
uosity can reach the age of its highest hopes and sup- 
posed glory —but, alas! leaving often a far happier 
phase behind; or before a tree, from its youthful 
grace, can have advanced to sturdy strength or lofty 
height, to fulfill also its destiny and offer us its gifts. 
We cannot call forth age at pleasure ; at best there is 
involved a lapse of years before a timber-tree can 
yield a plank, a beam, or-even as much as a solid 
post. 
I haye endeayored to arriye at some idea of the 
