218 THE MOUNTAIN. 



like dust in the tornado's path. One class represents the 

 hardy pioneers of a world in a process of reclamation from 

 chaos, for 



" My garden is the cloven rock, 



And my manure the snow, 

 And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, 

 In summer's scorching glow." 



Thus a full-armed warrior, ready for battle at a mo- 

 ment's warning, stands the pine-tree ; the other the repre- 

 sentative, also the fruit of a riper time, belonging to a more 

 progressed system, requiring richer soil and fatter provender, 

 can only sport destructible leaves for a short time, soft and 

 evanescent, and requires constant protection and care. 



Something of the individual tree or species, its style of 

 development or architecture ; something of the fashion of 

 tree-building on the Alleghanies, may introduce the inquirer 

 to a clearer recognition of the laws of organic life under 

 the despotism of physical conditions and the grave necessi- 

 ties of habitats. 



In noticing the trees of the mountain, without reference to 

 scientific classification or precedence, we commence with the 

 white ash, as a representative of use and beauty. This is 

 the FRAXINUS AMERICANA of the botanists, and is certainly 

 a family connection of Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, 

 but just where, in botanical, natural, or artificial systems, is 

 not recorded, 



The books quote it as " a large tree, fifty or sixty feet 

 high." This description will not apply to the tree as it 

 grows on the mountain. It there frequently attains to five 

 feet in diameter, with a height of 120 feet ; its close-ribbed, 

 deeply and finely sulcated light-gray bark covering a trunk as 

 straight as a granite shaft sometimes for eighty feet, and 

 without a branch. At this height it separates into branches, 

 forming a head of finely divided limbs and spray, its small, 

 green pinnate leaves pubescent and glaucous beneath in 3-4 

 pairs, giving to its delicate foliage an expression strange and 



