104 Apparent- Spontaniety of White Birch. 



I have seen comparatively fertile fields invaded year by year 

 by the loose drifting sands of the pine plains, from which the 

 wood had been many years previously removed. The mel- 

 ancholy and saddening appearance of such tracts would be 

 enough to depreciate the value of the adjoining lots. The 

 white pine and the pitch pine (P. strohus and rigida) have 

 been advantageously and artificially planted in some instances, 

 on such places. Snnilar processes have long obtained in 

 Europe ; and on the western coast of that continent, resort 

 has been had to the planting of species of the pine indigenous 

 to the climate, and to the admixture at the same time of cer- 

 tain plants of a spreading form, whose branches should cover 

 the ground, and thus prevent any further moving of the sur- 

 face by the winds. 



It is to be presumed that the attempt to restore wood growths 

 on those narrow gravelly ridges, which now deface so many of 

 our older farms, may prove difficult, after the natural restora- 

 tion, from the suckers of previously cut trees, shall have been 

 delayed, and the soil has become depauperated. Yet a grad- 

 ual series of yearly outlays might turn those unsightly ex- 

 crescences into more comely and useful tracts ; for where or 

 what is the tree, whose growth and shade and falling foliage, 

 and natural offices of kindly regard to the soil, would not 

 make a pleasant return for all such efforts in its behalf ? 



Rocky and precipitous surfaces of the ground often afford 

 excellent woodland, and should therefore be suffered to re- 

 new their growth, by excluding any treatment that would 

 prove injurious. The power of life, and even of a vigorous 

 growth, which some trees possess, of flourishing on such 

 soils, seems really marvellous, and exhibits a beneficence of 

 nature, betraying likewise some of the modes she employs in 

 converting the desert into places of fertility. The disinte- 

 gration of all rocks, especially of those termed the primitive 

 rocks, must be necessarily slow ; and the wonder of the be- 

 holder is excited in perceiving on what exiguity of nutriment, 

 as it would seem, trees thrive and grow in the interstices of 

 loose stones, or in the crevices of vast masses of granite. 

 Meanwhile, two processes are going on, viz., the upheaving 



