96 RAMBLES OF 



No. IX. 



THOSE who have only lived in forest countries, 

 where vast tracts are shaded by a dense growth of 

 oak, ash, chestnut, hickory, and other trees of deci- 

 duous foliage, which present the most pleasing varie- 

 ties of verdure and freshness, can have but little idea 

 of the effect produced on the feelings by aged forests 

 of pine, composed in a great degree of a single spe- 

 cies, whose towering summits are crowned with one 

 dark green canopy, which successive seasons find un- 

 changed, and nothing but death causes to vary. Their 

 robust and gigantic trunks rise an hundred or more 

 feet high, in purely proportioned columns, before the 

 limbs begin to diverge; and their tops, densely 

 clothed with long, bristling foliage, intermingle so 

 closely as to allow of but slight entrance to the sun. 

 Hence, the undergrowth of such forests is compara- 

 tively slight and thin, since none but shrubs, and 

 plants that love the shade, can flourish under this 

 perpetual exclusion of the animating and invigora- 

 ting rays of the great exciter of the vegetable world. 

 Through such forests, and by the merest foot-paths, 

 in great part, it was my lot to pass many miles almost 

 every day; and had I not endeavoured to derive some 

 amusement and instruction from the study of the 

 forest itself, my time would have been as fatiguing 

 to me, as it was certainly quiet and solemn. But 



