TREES THAT TRAVEL 123 



ture all bristly with vegetable spears and daggers 

 and with a defensive army of ants. The trees are 

 great believers in doing as the Romans do. In 

 taking up new abodes they often make complete 

 changes of clothing, habits, occupations and arma- 

 ments. In general, they are more prolific in the 

 South. 



Moreover, travelling trees are not merely globe- 

 trotters or vegetable hoboes. They travel by rule 

 and method, and their knowledge of the sciences of 

 chemistry and physics is astounding. They make 

 geography every day. Like men, some trees fol- 

 low rule and method more than others. Such trees 

 as the pines, ashes, elms, cottonwoods and syca- 

 mores migrate in vast armies and, like the bar- 

 barian hordes of mediaeval Europe, overrun the 

 territories of neighbouring kingdoms, there to be 

 swallowed up by strongly entrenched first-comers, 

 or themselves to eventually supplant the original 

 inhabitants. 



It must not be imagined that these tree move- 

 ments are things of the past. Like all the evolu- 

 tionary processes of nature, they are going on as 

 much to-day as they ever were. Within a genera- 

 tion the wild red cherry has spread from the east- 

 ern to the western United States. Botanists who 

 accompanied early government exploring expedi- 



