in part from its clecaj^, together with the multitudinous 

 other life that haunts it, largely perish with it. Such 

 a forest is a wonderful complex of mutually dependent 

 forms, a complex anciently established which once oblit- 

 erated in a region can never be restored. It passes 

 quickly, too, destroyed by axe and fire. No forest now 

 exists in Europe, botanists say, that shows the early, 

 natural condition of the European woodland; its very 

 type is matter for conjecture. 



The typical trees of the Acadian forest, those that 

 give it its peculiar character, are the northern evergreens, 

 the cone-bearing pines and firs and spruces, the hem- 

 locks and the arbor vitae. It is of these one thinks in 

 picturing to oneself the region. Maine itself is called 

 the Pine Tree State; its eastern coast, ''The Land of 

 Pointed Firs." Longfellow sets the Acadian scene for 

 us in Evangeline with "This is the forest primeval, 

 the murmuring pines and the hemlocks," and far out 

 to sea in early, long-voyaged days the approaching sailor 

 welcomed with delight the pungent forest fragrance. 



But mingled with these evergreens which give the for- 

 est its ]n'evailing character there are abundant other 

 trees that lend their beauty to the scene. Champlain 

 describes the oaks growing as in a park upon one side of 

 the Penobscot River, when he ascended it in 1604, with 

 pine foi-cst ou the other. Deer and bears grow fat in 

 autumn on the beechnuts in the wilder woods. The two 

 lujblest birch trees in Ihe world, the (Ainoe Birch, with 

 its pure white ti'uuk, and the Yellow Birch, which in 

 the North outstrips the oak itself in size, hud here their 

 native home. Ash and niai)le are abundant. Poplars, 

 mingled with Taper irirches, turn into rivers of gold 

 amongst ihe somber evergreens in fall, and nowhere is 

 the autuinn coloi'ing more brilliant or of richer contrast. 



Underneath tlie taller trees, wherever an even partial 

 l)reak occurs, siuubs and lesser trees spring up in wide 

 variety; thorns and wild plum trees, beautiful in flower 



4 



