Apparent Spontaneity of White Birch. 99 



Those that remained grew with great vigor on the next sum- 

 mer ; and selecting two of average size as specimens, I found 

 that they had attained to more than a foot in height. The 

 side branches were, when present, also four or five inches long. 

 Other plants "had now succeeded in finding foothold, such as 

 a species of Aster, the bog willow, (Salix conifera, (Muhl.,) 

 growing from a seedling an inch or two high in the season ; 

 while the Trichostomuni and Poli/trichiwi, already men- 

 tioned, had excluded the Funarias, and were fixed occu- 

 pants ; the latter making a capsule occasionally, and furnish- 

 ing its stellate and flower-like heads. 



The facility with which unoccupied spots can be thus ren- 

 dered productive, is in this case mainly owing to the great 

 quantity of seeds, which the white birch usually bears. 

 These are produced in catkins or aments, which, on ripening, 

 fall to pieces and are then blown to a distance by the autum- 

 nal and winter winds, in the form of chaff, and readily find 

 root in any new soil. For wherever the sod has been re- 

 moved or worn away by wheels in the transportation of the 

 gravel, for instance in the cart-ruts, a similar abundance of 

 seedling birches were to be seen. 



Two facts, then, present themselves, viz : — first, the exu- 

 berance of means in nature for vegetative processes ; and 

 second, the probable success attendant on experimental plant- 

 ing of sterile soils. 



The first is strikingly exemplified, not only in every such 

 instance as the one thus, accidentally as it were, brought 

 under my notice, but will become familiar to any one that 

 will take the trouble to inspect the natural growth of much 

 of the present woodlands near the seacoast, particularly in 

 Plymouth county, for instance. From the want of any tree 

 growth over vast areas of such gravelly hillocks, knolls and 

 sharp ridges, it might have been conjectured that no kind of 

 tree ever grew there, and that the bare features they present 

 at the present time, are identical with the aspects they pre- 

 sented before civilization was introduced. But such I suspect 

 is not the case ; and, on the contrary, I am led to suppose 

 that an old and wasteful husbandry has consigned to barren- 



