THE PINE. 25 



the deepest and shadiest ravine, and it is still the same. Not a bough 

 deviates from the angle prescribed by the great Architect ; we seem to 

 be in a kind of vegetable cathedral, so regular are the proportions, so 

 tall and so graceful are the pillars. 



In a pine-forest this straightness is made so much the more noticeable 

 from the circumstance of the trunks of the trees being ordinarily desti- 

 tute of branches for a considerable distance above tie ground, so that 

 we seem to be thrown into a labyrinth of brown poles. On these 

 branchless trunks is seen neither mistletoe nor ivy. A peculiar inde- 

 pendence and royalty of nature in the conifers generally, seems to keep 

 all such visitors aloof. True, there are examples of both parasites and 

 epiphytes occurring upon them ; but in England this is very rarely the 

 case, so rarely, that the exception is merely the proof of the rule. 

 No woodbine ever twines round the stem of a pine or fir. The wild 

 clematis, that loves to deck other trees with its beautiful flossy tufts, at 

 the season when red berries abound, is to the conifers an utter stranger. 

 Even brambles and wild roses, that often contrive to find a lodgment for 

 their upper trailers amid the boughs of the forest, are denied entrance 

 by the conifer. To all comers there is still the same old dignified 

 refusal of admission. 



Partly owing to the dead leaves upon the soil, and partly to that of 

 the dense and unbroken shade given by the conifers, and by none 

 more remarkably than by our indigenous species, in the pine-wood 

 again there is an almost painful dearth of herbaceous vegetation, and 

 consequently of flowers. No one ever gathers primroses in a pine-wood. 

 The ground is never lighted up with a sea of anemones ; nor do 

 blue-bells or forget-me-nots spread carpets of azure upon it. A few 

 procumbent brambles, serving only as traps for the feet ; a few of the 

 larger kinds of sylvan shield-fern, and a few mosses of the kinds that 

 grow in cushion-form tufts, constitute nearly the whole of the vegetation. 

 Scattered among their alien-looking foliage are the withered brown 

 needles and the emptied cones that have fallen from overhead, perhaps 

 even years ago, for they are slow to decay ; and except that quaint 

 fungi spring up in autumn, there is nothing else to attract the mere 

 collector into these solemn recesses. 



But for the contemplative and the poetic mind, there is no more- 

 powerful influence than is found in the pine-wood, and this at any 

 season of the year. In truth, the pine-wood is not a place wherein to 

 iiote seasons. It is independent of them ; presenting none of that 

 sweet succession that makes ever-changing picture-galleries of the 



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