234 ARBOR DAY 



is as marked a difference between different forests 

 as between different communities. A grove of pines 

 without underbrush, carpeted with the fine-fingered 

 russet leaves of the pine, and odorous of resinous 

 gums, has scarcely a trace of likeness to a maple 

 woods, either in the insects, the birds, the shrubs, 

 the light and shade, or the sound of its leaves. 

 If we lived in olden times among young mythol- 

 ogies, we should say that pines held the imprisoned 

 spirits of naiads and water-nymphs, and that their 

 sounds were of the water for whose lucid depths 

 they always sighed. At any rate, the first pines 

 must have grown on the seashore, and learned 

 their first accents from the surf and the waves; 

 and all their posterity have inherited the sound, 

 and borne it inland to the mountains. 



I like best a forest of mingled trees, ash, maple, 

 oak, beech, hickory, and evergreens, with birches 

 growing along the edges of the brook that carries 

 itself through the roots and stones, toward the 

 willows that grow in yonder meadow. It should 

 be deep and sombre in some directions, running off 

 into shadowy recesses and coverts beyond all foot- 

 steps. In such a wood there is endless variety. 

 It will breathe as many voices to your fancy as 

 might be brought from any organ beneath the 

 pressure of some Handel's hands. By the way, 

 Handel and Beethoven always remind me of forests. 

 So do some poets, whose numbers are various as the 



