AMERICAN FORESTS. 233 



of these new forests are now sure of fifty years' growth, but 

 they have made so little progress towards attaining the ap- 

 pearance of the immediately contiguous forest, as to induce 

 any man of reflection to determine that at least ten times 

 fifty years must elapse before their complete assimilation can 

 be effected. We find in the ancient works all that variety 

 of trees which give such unrivalled beauty to our forests, in 

 natural proportions. The first growth on the same kind of 

 land, once cleared and then abandoned to nature, on the con- 

 trary, is nearly homogeneous, often stinted to one or two, at 

 most three kinds of timber. If the ground has been cul- 

 tivated, the yellow locust will thickly spring up ; if not 

 cultivated the black and white walnut will be the prevailing 



growth Of what immense age, then, must be 



the works so often referred to, covered as they are by at 

 least the second growth, after the primitive forest state was 

 regained ? " 



We get another indication of antiquity in the "garden 

 beds," which we have already described. This system of cul- 

 tivation has long been replaced by the simple and irregular 

 " cornhills ;" and yet, according to Mr. Lapham,* the garden 

 beds are much more recent than the mounds, across which 

 they sometimes extend in the same manner as over the 

 adjoining grounds. If, therefore, these mounds belong to the 

 same era as those which are covered with wood, we get thus 

 indications of three periods; the first, that of the mounds 

 themselves ; the second, that of the garden beds ; and the 

 third, that of the forests. 



But American agriculture was not imported from abroad; 

 it resulted from, and in return rendered possible, the gradual 

 development of American semi- civilisation. This is proved 

 by the fact, that the grains of the Old World were entirely 

 absent, and that American agriculture was founded on the 



* lc\ p. 19. 



