I QO WHY CERTAIN TREES DIE OUT. 



forest of deciduous trees; and where deciduous trees 

 have grown, a pine forest takes their place. This 

 circumstance has been so repeatedly and generally 

 noticed by settlers and others who have written 

 upon life in the backwoods in Canada and the United 

 States, that we deem it unnecessary to do more than 

 state the fact. It is an article of faith among almost 

 all those with whom we have conversed upon this 

 matter. 



Now, if we consider for a moment how vast a 

 period of time the life of these ancient trees re- 

 presents, this great law of the rotation of Nature's 

 crops becomes not a little impressive. For ages the 

 giant pine trees have overshadowed the ground, and 

 year after year they have shed their seed in countless 

 myriads all over it layer after layer of it lies buried 

 in that exhaustless soil. Why then should their ancient 

 race and lineage be utterly blotted out, and the 

 stranger enter in and possess the land? And from 

 whence do the germs of the alien crowd proceed? 

 It is true that seeds may be carried about in great 

 abundance by birds, and certain kinds of them even 

 by the gales. By these means seeds become scattered 

 all over a vast extent of country ; and it seems difficult 

 to come to any other conclusion than that the existence 

 of these germs there at all must be due to some such 

 agency. 



But why should they alone survive ? And why should 

 the succession to the ancient stock entirely fail? 



These are questions into which it may seem almost 

 beyond our province to enquire and yet we may 

 depend upon it there is a reason, at once simple and 

 obvious, which would at once account for the failure 



