October 12, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



483 



A Florida Live Oak. 



A SHORT distance to the westward of the Ponce de Leon 

 Hotel, at St. Augustine, grows a Live Oak (Quercus 

 Virginiana), which even the most impassive guest notices and 

 admires as he drives by. The extremities of its lateral limbs, 

 after the manner of the Live Oak when growing alone, almost 

 sweep the earth's surface, and its branches form a singularly 

 perfect hemisphere, as may be seen in the illustrations on 

 pages 486 and 487, made from photographs taken in 

 early March of the current year. A measuring line of fifty 

 feet, drawn from the middle point of the first fork and 

 through this hemisphere, will reach its exterior limits 

 with remarkable uniformity at the tips of all the great 

 limbs. The tree is on the ground of IVIrs. Hanna, and 

 the neighbors make the improbable statement that it was 

 planted about a hundred years ago. Eighteen inches above 

 the ground it is fourteen feet one inch in circumference, and 

 the principal limb has a girth of six feet. This tree is doubt- 

 less the largest in its vicinity, but in the rich bottom-land of 

 the St. John, near Jacksonville, I have seen specimens of the 

 same species which I believe to be larger, and I have had de- 

 scribed to me one on the Ashley River, near Drayton Manor, 

 with a spread of branches one hundred and twenty-eight feet 

 in diaineter. 



Enormous must be the torsional strains thrown upon the 

 sturdy trunk of the St. Augustine Oak when the winds that 

 sweep up from the sea twist and wrench the great whorl of 

 tough limbs that seem a wheel of levers formed to tear the tree 

 from its hold upon the earth. And the hurricanes have left 

 a record of long and labored resistance, in the sinewy form of 

 the bole, where swelling cords of fibre bind together limbs 

 and roots, and the fine modeling of the wood suggests the 

 welted arm of a wrestler whose muscles have been trained 

 and shaped in the life and death struggles of the arena. This 

 grand trunk is coated with a soft gray bark upon whicli the 

 sunlight, reflected from the shining sand, falls with wonderful 

 effect, illuminating a network of crisp ridges and channels, 

 all finely wrought, incised, fretted and frosted as though cut 

 and chased with the chisel and graver of some inspired artist 

 from a mass of virgin silver ore. 

 New York. Robert H. Lamborii. 



Shongum. — III. 



A MAN once made himself famous by bringing to notice 

 the Providential nature of the fact that great rivers always 

 ran near large cities. In humble imitation, let me suggest 

 the beneficent intent with which a mountain-range of easy 

 access, and so full of elements of health and pleasure, was 

 placed so near the large centres of population on the Atlantic 

 coast. 



It is almost to be regretted, that the state cannot keep the 

 right of erhinent domain over these cliffs and lakes and forests, 

 that may in time rival the primeval ones in grandeur. Wise 

 forestry laws, and the planting of trees to produce the best 

 quality of timber in places now denuded, or where the 

 growth is worthless, would greatly increase the resources of 

 the state and furnish employment and homes for many of its 

 now idle citizens. Forests growing on the uplands would fill 

 the diminished water-springs and fertilize the wide valleys of 

 the Wallkill and the Roundout. Fine-grained sandstone, 

 which takes a polish like marble, is found here in unlimited 

 quantities, and is well adapted for all architectural purposes. 

 There is space enough in these vast solitudes for innumer- 

 able stately homes with wide lawns and sunny gardens, with- 

 out encroaching upon the restful and health-giving recesses 

 of the forest. The fine shale which underlies the sandstone 

 and comes to the surface in various places could be used to 

 make, through all the length of the range, roads as good for 

 driving as those which now add so greatly to the attractions 

 of Mohonk. Underthe paternal government of Bellamy's dream, 

 the region would support a large population in peace and 

 plenty, and still afford breathing-space for the dwellers of the 

 city in their hours of leisure. 



From Millbank Mountain, which is nearly the highest point 

 of the outside wall so abruptly separating this region from the 

 valley, we came by an easy carriage-road to the edge of the 

 cliff. Here we climbed a few steps upward over a glacier- 

 polished dome, and looked down 1,300 feet to the farms below. 

 Standing upon the bastion of the rock that projects a little be- 

 low the highest ledge, we dropped a stone, and by timing its 

 fall measured the depth of the abrupt descent. Seven hun- 

 dred feet below it struck the flat top of the foundation-wall, 

 and then bounded into the vale, beneath. The strength of 

 fibre in a Yellow Pine growing in this exposed situation 



compelled admiration. Though it had been from infancy 

 buffeted by the tempest, it had grown strong and straight, fully 

 thirty feet high, with a well-developed crown of foliage. Its 

 fellows were less vigorous, many even bent and broken, and 

 some, like alpine trees, deliberately lay down to grow. 



Millbrook and High Point, rising above the other peaks, 

 look at each other evenly across a distance of a few miles. 

 Sewockenomo and Onaghtin, chiefs of the Esopus tribe, must 

 often have looked anxiously from these points over to the 

 Hudson River, where colonies of the Dutch had been estab- 

 lished. On May 16, 1664, they signed the treaty by which the 

 whites took peaceable possession of the land. These historic 

 names might well take the place of the common names the 

 peaks now bear. Palmaghatt, which sounds oriental but is 

 probably an Indian relic, is the name of a deep, narrow ravine, 

 opening between two sections of these upright walls and end- 

 ing in the upper valley beneath one side of High Point. It is 

 two miles long, and in some places not more than thirty feet 

 wide, with an average width of fifty feet. For most of the 

 length these walls are from ninety to two hundred feet high, 

 but as they widen reach a greater elevation. A small brook, 

 fed by springs or by subterranean leakage from the lake, runs 

 through Palmaghatt, but is so covered by broken trees and 

 fallen rocks that though its musical tinklings are often heard 

 three feet beneath the elastic surface, its waters seldom come 

 to light. This deep, damp soil once nourished gigantic Hem- 

 locks, long since felled and stripped of their bark. Their suc- 

 cessors, which we trust the woodman of the future will spare, 

 bid fair to equal them. Here the Yellow Birch also grows 

 very large and tall, and to one looking down from above the 

 ravine seems full of leafage like a bit of the primeval forest 

 and must have afforded a safe hiding-place in the Indian 

 wars. 



Mossy Glen is a larger basin and similar to that through 

 which the Awasting flows, but wider and more open to the 

 sun. Its bordering walls hint at seismic disturbance, or the 

 level strata seem to have loosened and twisted on their 

 foundations, and at one point the great square rocks have 

 fallen and are heaped together like the ruins of a temple. 

 Here, too, the soil is deep. The smaller growth has been ju- 

 diciously cut and the larger trees have space for full develop- 

 ment. We measured a Black Birch seven feet four inches 

 around, four feet above its roots, and a White Birch eight feet 

 two inches, and there were many trees as large as these. 

 There were many Hemlocks as large as those in Palmaghatt, 

 and though most of the oldest trees had long ago been re- 

 moved, their decaying stumps told the story of former 

 grandeur. One recently cut lay on the ground entire and 

 stripped of its bark ; the butt measured forty-nine inches in di- 

 ameter. The Birch-trees were unusually tall and straight, lift- 

 ing their leafy canopies twenty feet above us. 



These trees are also interesting from their power of adapt- 

 ing themselves to circumstances. I came upon one which 

 grew with quiet grace beside a rock, but on one side had 

 thrown out a buttress that divided itself into branches four 

 inches in thickness and then run into the ground. On closer 

 inspection I found that the supposed rock was the large root 

 of an older tree decayed past all shape, while the stem lay be- 

 hind it a mere bank of Mosses. Then I knew what had hap- 

 pened. The young Birch had begun to grow at the root of an 

 older tree. Some other applicant for the same position had 

 crowded it and curved its stem. The old tree fell one day and 

 the Birch found itself with its face to the ground, its deformed 

 back making a curve in the air. In the upheaval the crowd- 

 ing neighbor had disappeared, and the two lower branches 

 that had before drooped near its roots were looking up to the 

 sky. What messages were sent from head to foot, what an- 

 swers were whispered by the trembling leaves, we shall never 

 know, but these two branches have grown into tall trees of 

 equal height, the parent stem and other branches having will- 

 ingly buried themselves to sustain the symmetry of the 

 favored pair. If these dumb children of earth could speak, 

 what stories they might tell of fortune and misfortune, of fear 

 and desire. To one who observes closely, there is so much 

 individuality in native growth. It appeals to the imaginafion 

 as nothing cultivated can do. 



At the eastern end of Lake Minnewaska stand a Birch and a 

 Hemlock, their twisted roots giving evidence of some dra- 

 matic incident in their early history. The water here is shal- 

 low and the border level for a space, and other trees grow 

 straight and commonplace. But these in seedhood, perhaps, 

 perceived some need of mutual help, or else struggled to- 

 gether over some plant-food until their roots became strangely 

 interlocked, looped back and forth and twisted together like 

 the limbs of athletes wrestling. But now Tsuga, without ap- 



