66 HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



days of fish packing. The walnut and the hornbeam and 

 the beech and the maple have all been honored by special 

 uses in the economies of a self-sufficient community. 



The trees which were standing here in a great virgin 

 forest when first the Anglo-Saxon devastator landed, were 

 the direct descendants of the first post-glacial comers ; 

 but many generations of forest had lived and died. The 

 oldest of trees did not reach perhaps more than three 

 hundred years before some heavy storms or lightning 

 strokes would take advantage of their decrepitude to 

 shatter them. Then the mosses and lichens and funguses 

 would creep upon their prostrate forms, and other roots 

 of young ambitious trees would feed upon the relics of 

 those patriarchs. Living and dying, each tree had its 

 little romance. The living cast their seeds to make more 

 life, and dying they left their richness to the soil. They 

 protected each other from the winds, and all grew taller by 

 the compact. They helped each other and they murdered 

 each other. The grapevines would ask the privilege from 

 some tree to climb up into the sunlight where its grapes 

 might be held up to ripen ; but its broad leaves would 

 take so much of the sun as to stunt the growth of its 

 benefactor. The woodbines twisted upwards around some 

 growing tree until the bark of the tree was no longer able 

 to expand, and, choked to death, it fell a victim to the 

 vine's embrace. 



Meanwhile the roots of all were feeling their way 

 through the gravel and the clay, searching for moisture 

 and for food. Those which felt among the rocks would 

 sometimes wedge into a crack, and would swell by growth 

 enough to loosen tons of granite from the ledges. Thickly 

 intertwined both by roots and by branches was the fabric 

 of vegetation. Like any garment, it was subject to the 

 fretting of moths ; but its living energy repaired all waste, 

 and it grew steadily thicker until the hand of man was 

 set to its depletion. 



