THE SINGING PINES 63 



it in their dark green from mountain top to sea 

 Shore. Suddenly no one knows whence, the oaks 

 and other deciduous trees appeared among them 

 and in part drove them out of the richer soils. 

 "The oak," says Gray, "has driven the pine to 

 the sands." Yet the pines grow equally well 

 among the rough rocks of mountain slopes where 

 the winter gales that wreck the hardwood trees 

 leave them untouched. This is the more strange 

 as pines rarely root deeply. The roots, even of 

 old trees seventy to one hundred feet in height, 

 rarely go into the earth more than two or three 

 feet, taper rapidly and extend not usually over 

 twenty feet on every side. In young trees 

 twenty or twenty-five feet tall the roots do not 

 penetrate more than fifteen or eighteen inches, 

 yet great old trees stand alone in pasture and on 

 hilltop, exposed to all the fury of the fiercest 

 gales, rarely if ever blown down. The structure 

 of yielding limbs that swing so that the gusts 

 glance on their plumes, and the needle-like leaves 

 that let the torrents of air slip through them, is 

 no doubt the reason for this. The outermost 

 pines of the grove shoulder the gale away from 

 the others, yet let it slip by themselves, giving it 

 no grip whereby to tear them up. The resinous 



