1871. 



NEW ENGLAND FARTMER. 



269 



BOTATIOM" OF FOKEST TREES. 



MOXG far- 

 mers there 

 has been 

 much specu- 

 lation as to 

 the cause of 

 rotation in 

 forest trees. 

 It is well 

 known that 

 when a for- 

 est is cut ofF, 

 it is not usu- 

 ally succeed- 

 ed by a 

 growth of the 

 same kind of 

 wood. If 

 hard wood is 

 taken off, it is succeeded by soft wood, — pine, 

 white or yellow, hemlock, and sometimes in 

 low land by spruce or hackmatack. If the 

 growth removed was of the latter varieties, 

 then oak of several kinds, maple, beech, wal- 

 nut or chestnut may succeed. 



Various reasons are given for this change. 

 Mr. Thoreau, the author of "Walden," "A 

 Week on the Merrimack River," and other 

 works, was in the habit of passing much time 

 in the woods and fields, and was a constantly 

 interested observer of the operations of na- 

 ture. In one of his works, entitled "Excur- 

 sions," he states the opinion that the rotation 

 of forests is occasioned by the "transportation 

 of seed from where it grows to where it is 

 planted. "This is done chiefly," he con- 

 tinues, "by the agency of the wind, water, and 

 animals. The lighter seeds, as those of pines 

 and maples, are transported chiefly by wind 

 and water ; the heavier, as acorns and nuts, 

 by animals." 



Suppose that an oak forest oi ten acres 

 were removed, is it probable that the winds 

 would carry seeds of the soft woods so as to 

 plant that precise ten acres, and no more? 

 Why not disperse them over only a poi'tion of 

 it or scatter them beyond, over fifteen or 

 twenty acres ? It is not unusual to find a ten 

 acre forest of hard wood succeeded by soft 

 wood, over nearly the same limits ; not much 

 less, and not much more ! The winds do not 

 probably spread the seeds of plants with such 

 mathematical exactness. 

 2 



It is true, that adjacent to a forest of pines, 

 if other crops are not growing there, there 

 will be an extension of pine forest if the soil 

 is suited to their growth. So in a growth of 

 walnut or oak, squiiTcls may carry nuts away 

 and bury them in the soil, but as these are 

 hidden for future food, they would not be 

 likely to be in sufficient c[uantity to start up a 

 new forest. But the truth is, they do not 

 generally take the nuts away from the forest 

 and hide them, but place them in cavities in 

 the trees themselves, or in the ground under 

 them. So the blue jays, and other birds, 

 hide nuts, but in the forest, rather than away 

 from it. In smaller fruits, such as cherries 

 and the seeds of raspberries and blackberries, 

 birds swallow the whole fruit, and drop their 

 seeds in every direction. Neither the birds 

 nor beasts, however, take them to well defined 

 limits and deposit them, so as to bring plants 

 of an entirely different kind from those which 

 preceded them on the same ground. 



Now as to what nature has been doing in 

 the myriads of years of her operations, we 

 know but little. In the different orders of 

 plants which have subsisted upon the surface, 

 and at length mingled again with the dust 

 from which they were formed, it is probable 

 that the seeds of each may have been shed 

 upon the soil. In the great changes which 

 have taken place upon the surface by the 

 agency of earthquakes, tornadoes and floods, 

 these seeds may have been so thoroughly 

 mingled with the earth as to furnish all sorts 

 of seeds of plants which are indigenous to the 

 region, throughout every portion of it, whether 

 near the surface or vastly below it. 



This, we believe, is the common theory. 

 We have found only one person who states it 

 as his belief, that creation is now constantly 

 going on ; that the seeds of plants which 

 covered the earth thrown out from forty feet 

 below the surface, in digging a well, were 

 then and there created, and did not exist in 

 the earth when it was thrown up ! 



The prevailing opinion, however, among 

 the most intelligent writers, is, that this change 

 takes place in consequence of the exhattstion 

 in the soil of those elements of nutrition which 

 are indispensable to the healthy gro\\i;h of the 

 plant. That the natural law is, "that where 

 other circumstances of climate, moisture, &c., 

 are equal, the natural vegetation — that which 



