Tree Life 
mass produces a thousand shimmerings of light and 
shade, ever grateful to the eye, as compared with the 
characterless type of leaf in the sour gum, sassafras, and 
osage orange. Although a leaf is not as important as a 
tree’s other features for showing its character, a little 
observation convinces one that none other exhibits more 
peculiar and interesting differences. Nothing will create 
such an instant respect for this atom of vegetation as 
the accurate drawing of half a dozen kinds. 
* 
The most ponderous volume ever published is the 
ancient record of this earth, compiled during thousands 
of years, and imprinted in the rocks deep-buried in the 
dust of ages, which here and there protrude their leafy 
edges. If all the pages shall ever become accessible, 
and their chirography legible, the massive work will ex- 
cite the profoundest interest—probably the one record 
capable of surviving the ultimate wreck of earthly litera- 
ture. An interesting page of that long history is the 
testimony of fossil trees—rhododendron, oak, sweet gum, 
persimmon, etc.—as to the climatic changes that have 
swept again and again over the world, alternately exter- 
minating and fostering the various forms of animal and 
vegetable life. 
In this account we read that magnolias, now a sub- 
tropical growth, once adorned the landscape of Green- 
land. It is hard to conceive of the present flora of 
Virginia as having ever flourished far up within the icy 
regions of the arctic circle. What vicissitudes vegeta- 
tion has experienced in by-gone ages! Now banished by 
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