46 THE PINE. 



in this respect than many others; they are features, 

 nevertheless, in which it shares. A coniferous tree 

 is never found accommodating itself to the surface of 

 broken ground. The branches never hang them- 

 selves over a waterfall or the brink of a ravine. 

 They refuse to receive impressions from surrounding 

 conditions, maintaining their own original and in- 

 flexible direction. On a mountain- side, we may 

 notice, even as we rush past in a rail way- carriage, 

 the stiff and erect green pyramids, every tree the 

 exact counterpart of every other, and the stems as 

 straight as the columns of an ancient temple. Go 

 into the deepest and shadiest glen, 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 Alhambra, 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 destitute of 

 branches for a considerable distance above the 

 ground, so that we seem to be thrown into a laby- 

 rinth 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 



