12 IN THE ACADIAN LAND. 



forms of vegetation, wherein there was no blos- 

 som, and therefore no fruit. The first trees 

 were giant club-mosses and ferns ; their trunks 

 are imbedded in coal mines, and they have be- 

 come coal. Trees that bear fruit came late in 

 the world's histoiy. They are products of evo- 

 lutionary action, whereby creation proceeds to 

 higher and more complex forms. Our trees all 

 have pedigrees that run back into the lowest 

 and earliest vegetable life. They have been a 

 weary while in the making, as we reckon time. 

 They have all been elected by processes that 

 operated without sentiment, and permitted only 

 the fittest to survive. They have all come forth 

 out of great tribulation, and every outward feat- 

 ure and every inward disposition and tendency 

 of each species is either a scar of conflict, a plan 

 for propagation, a vestige of ancestry, or a taint 

 of on-coming dissolution. The dimensions when 

 full-grown, the nature of the grain, the peculiar- 

 ities of the bark, the shape of the leaves, the 

 contour of the foliage, are all what they are be- 

 cause of the experiences of the species and its 

 ancestries. To deny this statement would be to 

 ignore the plainest truths. If any reader feels 

 that the Creator is not recognized in this way 

 then let him consider how a tree is not called 

 into existence to-day, but grows slowly from a 



