THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 343 



woods exhibit essential differences in their features; the 

 former with straight stems arranged parallel to each other 

 like columns, with the conical crowns of verticillate branches ; 

 the latter bearing on the gnarled, curved trunks, the lines 

 of which cross in all directions in perspective, a flat umbel 

 of foliage, a bearing which is most purely and nobly ex- 

 hibited by the Stone Pine. These Pine-woods, which 

 extend over miles of country in the Mark of Brandenburg, 

 are repeated in more luxuriant development in the " Pine 

 barrens" of North America. Here, as there, loving a sandy 

 soil, they extend in a broad band several hundred English 

 miles long, down to the coast of Virginia and North 

 Carolina, forming by their mass a very prominent feature 

 in the physiognomy of the whole country. 



Still more striking is the distinction between the par- 

 ticular formations of the Leafy Woods ; the crowded 

 arrangement of the social Beeches, Limes or Elms, produces 

 woods with dusky shades and a soil void of vegetation, 

 while the proud Oak, repressing the growth of all other 

 trees in its immediate neighbourhood, stands alone upon a 

 soil pleasantly clothed with grass and herbs, or unites in 

 small groups to form those wonderful woodland landscapes, 

 to which the immortal pencil of Ruysdael so often introduces 

 us. Differently acts the massive lustre of the Magnolia 

 woods of the southern part of North America, from the 

 elegant beauty of the African Acacia groves, or the ghost- 

 like transparency of the Northern Birch, and the whole 

 tropical world unfolds a multiformity, 1 * the description of 

 which would be an inexhaustible theme. I will only take 

 notice here of a strange contrast afforded in some regions 

 of the hot climate. The rude cold of Winter robs our 

 woods of their fairest adornments, and leafless stand out 

 the dark branches from the snow or the moist black soil, in 



