FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN. 231 



the trees are familiar and handsome, but more of the genus 

 are plain unostentatious shrubs. 



These are the principal trees which are found in the 

 forests of the Alleghany Mountains in Pennsylvania. 

 The poet might make a book of biography, and the 

 artist a gallery of paintings of these splendid trees alone. 

 An enumeration of some of the most striking trees or larger 

 forms of the vegetable world is all that has been produced 

 as the living mantle or robes of life and organic appendage 

 to the mountain, viewed individually, and in the concrete, 

 or masses of woods. What fills with amazement the ex- 

 plorer of these forests is the thickness or density of the 

 growth, and enormous size of the trees. He is troubled to 

 conceive how these huge and thickly-planted trunks, which 

 seem to have scarcely room to stand, are nourished, or grow 

 in the limited space allotted to each tree. Such pyramids of 

 wood might be supposed to require some base to support 

 them, but the trees are so crowded, that were not the surface 

 of the earth the chained continuity of interlocked roots that 

 it is, they could not stand. Where the axe commences to fell 

 these forests, and trees are left standing alone, they soon 

 fall to the earth for want of the support and protection 

 of the surrounding mass. The woods are so dense as to be 

 almost impenetrable, the under-growth frequently having 

 disappeared entirely, the branchless and naked trunks, 

 supporting, only on their summits, a canopy of leaf-bearing 

 branches. In some of these forests the fallen stems of im- 

 mense trees, that have died of old age, half cover the 

 ground. Here, in deep shadows and silence, sleep the mo- 

 narchs of the forest, silent and sequestered, the dark soli- 

 tudes furnishing a suitable graveyard for these heroes of a 

 thousand storms, each one reposing as he fell, for now 



" Low lies the plant to whose creation went 

 Sweet influence from every element ; 

 Whose living towers the years conspired to build, 

 Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild." 



