XXIV. THE PASSING OF THE TREES 



"My heart is a:ced within me when I think 



Of the great miracle that still goes on, 



In silence, round me — the perpetual work 



Of the creation, finished, yet rene-wed 



Forever. Written on thy works I read 



The lesson of thy own eternity. 



Lo! all grow old and die— but see, again, 



How on the faltering footsteps of drcay 



Youth presses — ever giy and beautiful youth 



In all its beiutiful forms. These lofty trees 



Wave not less proudly that their ancestors 



Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost 



One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet. 



After the flight of untold centuries, 



The freshness of her far beginning lies 



And yet shall lie." 



— Bryant (Forest Hymn) 



What becomes of the giants of the forest when they fall ? 

 A ^-ise man of old said, "In the place where the tree falleth 

 there shall it he." Yes, if it escape the woodcutter, it Hes 

 there; but it does not lie very long. The great oak that 

 crashes to earth, crushing everything in its path, hes but one 

 growing season ere the underlings are green above it : a few 

 years more, and they are crowding into the upper light that it 

 once monopolized. Its building up was long— centuries long ; 

 but a decade is ample for its decay. And well it is for the 

 living that the dead do not longer enciunber the ground, or 

 hold locked up in their stark bodies the materials needed for 

 the growth of a new generation. 



Nature makes of the dissolution of these imponderable 

 trunks a lightsome task. She proceeds, as ever, without 

 haste or noise, making use of frost and sun and rain and a long 

 succession of living agents. From the first souring of the sap 

 to the final mixing of the log-dust with the soil, she uses bac- 

 teria, molds and fungi ; and of the higher fungi, an interest- 

 ing succession of forms appears as the dissolution of the wood 



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