JANUARY. 



33 



111 an old pine-wood our attention is attracted by the num- 

 ber and variety of lichens that incrust the bark of the trees 

 and hang from their boughs. The star-like shield-lichen 

 (Parme/m) covers the outer surface of the trees with its leaf- 

 like scales, and the branching threads of the Ustiea depend 

 from the superior branches. Many other rare species deco- 

 rate the trees with their tufts, circles and protuberances, and 

 their curiously painted dots and patches. The mosses, how- 

 ever, are checked in their growth, by the foliage that covers 

 the ground. The greenness of a pine-wood is chiefly over- 

 head, and not under our feet. But the few plants, whose 

 habits permit them to thrive here, are the more conspicuous, 

 because they are not obscured by a crowded assemblage of 

 other plants. Hence the little creeping Michella, with its 

 checkered green leaves, its twin flowers, resembling heath 

 blossoms, and its scarlet berries, frequently greets our sight 

 in a dense pine-wood. 



In this part of the country, the white pine usually predom- 

 inates in our evergreen forests, mixed occasionally with yel- 

 low pine and hemlock in about equal proportions. As we 

 advance in a northerly direction, the spruces and firs become 

 the most abundant ; and as we proceed southward, the yel- 

 low pines and junipers are the most common : the southern 

 cypress takes the place of the white cedar, and the white 

 pine yields its sovereignty to the long-leaved pitch pine. In 

 the Southern States, large tracts, called the pine barrens, are 

 covered with a mixed growth of the long-leaved, the loblolly 

 and the variable yellow pine, forming a remarkable feature of 

 the landscape in that part of the country. Their growth is 

 seldom so dense as that of the northern pine regions, and 

 whole forests are often so thinly planted, that one may drive 

 many miles through them on horseback. 



In the interior of these pine barrens, there is a breathing of 

 solemnity which is very impressive. Though they do not 

 form so deep a shade as the denser pine-woods of the north, 

 the tall, gaunt and grotesque forms of the trees, the flat, in- 

 terminable plains on which they grow, the dark drapery of 

 lichens that hangs from their boughs, the silence of their sol- 



VOL. XXII. NO. I. 5 



