328 Personality of Trees [THIRD WEEK 



strain are those when the opponents are fast-locked, mo- 

 tionless, when the advantage comes, not with quickness, 

 but with staying power; and likewise in the struggle of 

 tree with tree the fact that one or two years, or even whole 

 decades, watch the efforts of the branches to lift their 

 leaves one above the . other, detracts nothing from the 

 bitterness of the strife. 



Far to the north we will sometimes find groves of young 

 balsam firs or spruce, hundreds of the same species 

 of sapling growing so close together that a rabbit may not 

 pass between. The slender trunks, almost touching each 

 other, are bare of branches. Only at the top is there light 

 and air, and the race is ever upward. One year some 

 slight advantage may come to one young tree, some 

 delicate unbalancing of the scales of life, and that fortunate 

 individual instantly responds, reaching several slender side 

 branches over the heads of his brethren. They as quickly 

 show the effects of the lessened light and forthwith the 

 race is at an end. The victor shoots up tall and straight, 

 stamping and choking out the lives at his side, as surely 

 as if his weapons were teeth and claws instead of delicate 

 root-fibres and soughing foliage. 



The contest with its fellows is only the first of many. 

 The same elements which help to give it being and life 

 are ever ready to catch it unawares, to rend it limb from 

 limb, or by patient, long-continued attack bring it crashing 

 to the very dust from which sprang the seed. 



We see a mighty spruce whose black leafage has waved 

 above its fellows for a century or more, paying for its 

 supremacy by the distortion of every branch. Such are 



