OF PLANTS. 285 



northern part of it, was once one continuous pine 

 forest, and notwithstanding the " grubbing " by 

 the Europeans who have settled there, much of it 

 is a pine forest still. In those forests which have 

 stood for ages, there are of course trees in all 

 stages both of growth and decay ; and as pines, 

 in swampy places, are generally assailed by fungi 

 at the surface of the ground, as soon as they have 

 ceased to vegetate, many of them are thrown 

 down every season ; and when the " freshets," or 

 floods of the spring, set in, they are rolled onward 

 to the sea. Those who live in places where there 

 is no flood, but where the surface of the earth is 

 clear, and every porous soil absorbs part of the 

 water which falls from the clouds, can form but 

 little idea of the violence of a flood over a frozen 

 surface, where the earth absorbs not a drop, and 

 the melting of the snow is added to the rain that 

 falls. The combined violence of these is very 

 great, and by means of it vast quantities of drift 

 wood are every season, though not in all seasons 

 equally, rolled down the rivers of Northern Ame- 

 rica into the sea, and thence distributed by the sea 

 currents, along the shores of all the dreary islands 

 that lie near the margin of the Polar ice. 



These pine forests form the characteristic vege- 

 tation of the verge of the northern Polar zone, 

 and the northern part of the temperate one. There 

 some of the species are found far to the south as 

 in the island of Teneriffe, and the mountains of 

 Mexico, and some of the West India islands ; but 

 it is a curious distinction of the two hemispheres, 

 that though there are trees in the southern that 

 are called pines, and have some of the characters 



