10 MY REAL ESTATE. 



tirely cut off a few years before I came 

 into possession, and at present the place is 

 covered with a thicket of vines, bushes, and 

 young trees, all engaged in an almost des- 

 perate struggle for existence. When the 

 ground was cleared, every seed in it be- 

 stirred itself and came up ; others made 

 haste to enter from without ; and ever since 

 then the battle has been going on. It is 

 curious to consider how changed the ap- 

 pearance of things will be at the end of 

 fifty years, should nature be left till then 

 to take its course. By that time the contest 

 will for the most part be over. At least 

 nineteen twentieths of all the plants that 

 enlisted in the fight will have been killed, 

 and where now is a dense mass of shrub- 

 bery will be a grove of lordly trees, with 

 the ground underneath broad -spaced and 

 clear. A noble result ; but achieved at 

 what a cost ! If one were likely himself to 

 live so long, it would be worth while to cat- 

 alogue the species now in the field, for the 

 sake of comparing the list with a similar 

 one of half a century later. The contrast 

 would be an impressive sermon on the mu- 

 tability of mundane things. But we shall 



