182 GLEANINGS FEOM NATURE. 



or two inches in length, and arranged along the 

 branches in small bunches, wither and fall each au- 

 tumn. The cones of the tamarack are about one- 

 half inch long, ovoid or egg-shaped, and purple or 

 brownish when they ripen. The wood is hard, 

 strong, and very durable, and is used for sjiip build- 

 ing, fence posts, telegraph poles and railway ties. Tho 

 slender roots are composed of tough fibres of great 

 length. The Canadians and Indians were accustomed 

 to use these fibres for sewing their bark canoes, hence 

 Hiawatha is said to have made the following request : 



"Give me of your roots, O Tamarack! 



Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree ! 

 My canoe to bind together, 



So to bind the ends together, 

 That the water in ay not enter, 



That the river may not wet me." 



The tamarack is a lover of cooler climes than is 

 furnished by our latitude, and hence flourishes in 

 greatest abundance in the far north, its southern 

 range in this State being on a line drawn east and 

 west through Ft. Wayne and Kewanna. Like its 

 cousin, the bald cypress, its chosen home is low, 

 swampy land where it often thickly covers Jarge areas 

 and furnishes that dense shade so characteristic of 

 any member of the pine family where growing closely 

 together in great numbers. 



After entering a few yards within the swamp a 

 sense of solitude and loneliness, such as I have never 

 felt, even in the most dense of our ordinary forests, 

 began to oppress me a sense which increased with 

 every onward step and did not wholly disappear until 



