380 MISSION OF THE FOREST. 



twining and overarching boughs, sustaining by their bulk and shading 

 with their foliage other and weaker plants, have formed in the course 

 of innumerable ages those masses of umbrageous gloom called Forests. 



These, undoubtedly, are one of the grandest and most impressive 

 monuments of the Creative Power ; one, I may add, of the most 

 eloquent, for there is nothing in all Nature whose study better repays 

 the student, or which more largely abounds in important lessons. 



The virgin forest, moreover, is one of the sanctuaries of Nature, 

 where her mysteries are seldom profaned by man. There life reveals 

 itself, and moves at liberty, under an infinite variety of forms. It is 

 the asylum of a multitude of animals of all classes, which find therein, 

 united, the two essential conditions of existence shelter and nourish- 

 ment. Without the difficult approaches, the obscurity and the pro- 

 found depth of the forests, says a naturalist, wjaat would become 

 of the species of mammals, birds, and reptiles, against which man 

 wages incessant war ? Nature, then, seems to have provided these 

 immense reservoirs to prevent their species from being totally annihi- 

 lated. Independently of the trees which constitute the forests, a 

 host of other plants make them their exclusive habitat ; thence the 

 specific and eminently characteristic names such as Sylvestns, 

 Sylvaticus, Nemorosus imposed upon a great number among them. 

 Such plants are distinguished from their congeners by the great 

 dimensions of their stems ; but, on the other hand, they do not 

 possess the brilliantly-coloured flowers which adorn the plants of the 

 mountains and the plains always exposed to the action of the solar 

 light. 



The forests, moreover, offer for the botanist this remarkable and 

 singularly precious circumstance, that they form natural collections of 

 trees of the same species, or of several species of the same genus, or at 

 least of the same family; so that their limits circumscribe the habitat 

 of these grand vegetables, and permit us to determine with ease their 

 geographical distribution. 



The forests fill an important function in the general economy of 

 the globe, by the influence which they exercise upon the mean 



