September 9, 1891.J 



Garden and Forest. 



429 



Correspondence. 



Nature's Nurseries. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — In these days when, fortunately, the need for preserv- 

 ing our forests is proclaimed on every hand, and when even 

 those who do not think of this need are pretty sure to find a 

 wooded country beautiful and to rejoice in the presence of 

 forests near their homes, it is interesting to hear the opinion 

 of an occasional " survival " of a day when a very different 

 state of mind was prevalent. It is interesting, because such an 

 opinion strikes us as singular and reprehensible, and thus it is 

 proved that "public sentiment" has changed, even if it has 

 not yet conspicuously expressed itself in a practical way. The 

 " survival " whom I have now in mind is a survival indeed — ■ 

 an old country-woman living near the shores of Buzzard's Bay 

 who claims to have seen 107 years, and who is proved by the 

 town records to have seen 103. To visit her one leaves the 

 highway and follows a rough farm-track, first through a couple 

 of fields, and then for more than half a mile through a dense 

 wood composed in greater part of White Pines. Her cottage 

 stands in what looks like a western "clearing," three or four 

 acres in extent, and surrounded on all sides by the forest. One 

 day when we were remarking on the quiet charm of the spot, 

 she protested that it was much prettier years ago, when there 

 were no trees in sight. " When was this ? " I asked. " Well," 

 said the ancient dame, " I took care of Johnny Stuart's mother 

 when he was born, and he's about thirty years old. And I 

 reck'lect that as I was coming home the last of the old woods 

 had been cut down, and the timber lay there all nicely corded 

 up. My ! it looked lovely ; no woods just as far as you could 

 see ! " And then, when we remarked that we admired the 

 woods, she said : "Well, you haven't had too much of them. 

 We had. We got tired of looking at them, and liked to see 

 them go." And this, in truth, was a not unnatural state of 

 mind in those who had to make their living out of the land, 

 and had had small chance to cultivate feeling for beauty de- 

 void of a utilitarian flavor. 



If old Aunt Keziah's memory is not at fault, and Johnny 

 Stuart is indeed about thirty years of age to-day, the tract to 

 which she referred cannot have been long under cultivation. 

 Indeed, it would seem, from the size of the trees, as though it 

 must have been allowed at once to grow up in forest again, 

 were it not for the character of the present wood. Neither 

 here, nor in any of the adjacent parts of Plymouth County, so 

 largely covered with forests of Pine, Oak, Swamp Maple and 

 Birch, does one often see those ancient stumps from which 

 tall, thin, sapling-like trees have sprung, which in other dis- 

 tricts show that the land was never cleared for the plow. All 

 our miles and miles of forest, so far as I have walked and 

 driven through them, are devoid of stumps, and composed of 

 trees that have evidently grown from seed. Some of them, nota- 

 bly those tracts exclusively covered with Pines, have evidently 

 been planted ; but in this immediate vicinity they have chiefly 

 covered themselves, and have once been cultivated meadows 

 and farms ; and here and there, even at considerable dis- 

 tances from the highways, one comes in their densest shadow 

 upon lines of ruined stone walls, upon ancient Apple-trees and 

 the foundations of former homes. In one way the sight some- 

 times affects one sadly ; but the forests themselves, though 

 they contain few large trees, are extremely pretty — far more 

 charming than those which have immediately sprung up again 

 on land never thoroughly cleared. Lacking near standards of 

 comparison, one soon forgets that trees grow larger than these, 

 and notices only their varied spontaneous grouping, and, on 

 the outskirts of the woods, their beautiful development. And 

 those who like to study the methods of Nature may find ample 

 and varied fields for observation. Here we can see, better 

 than in any other district I know, how eager Nature is to grow 

 trees whenever she gets a chance. For instance, next this cot- 

 tage, which stands by the highway, is a wide meadow, where 

 horses and cattle are pastured, covered with close grass, and 

 quite unbroken by even the smallest sapling. The next field, 

 divided off by merely a slender wire fence, was probably de- 

 voted to the same use, or perhaps to some crop, until ten or 

 twelve years ago, but since then has been left untouched. And 

 here is a mass of little trees growing as one might think trees 

 never could grow, of many varieties, but all practically of a 

 size, packed densely together, and pressing so closely to the 

 slight fence that it seems as though it must soon give way, and 

 then the pasture would be covered not by seedlings, but by 

 regiments of young trees from this baby forest, eagerly rush- 

 ing out for a little wider foothold and a little more air and sun. 

 It is impossible, looking at the edge of such a young wood, not 



to fancy its trees are sentient beings, panting and stretching to 

 relieve themselves from their crowding neighbors, and able to 

 do so if the fence were gone. 



A little further on we may come to an older piece of wood 

 where the struggle for life has thinned the ranks of the trees, 

 and where they have attained a considerable size, leaving 

 space between them for an undergrowth of shrubs and vines. 

 Again, if we follow some wood-path — the remains very likely 

 of an old wagon-road — we shall come upon a plantation of 

 White Pines, perhaps fifteen or twenty years old, where the 

 lower branches are all dead but have not yet dropped off, 

 where we see into, but cannot walk through, a ghostly-looking 

 thick maze of brown twigs, and the shade is so dense that no 

 undergrowth can live on the carpet of brown needles. A little 

 further and the Pines are bigger, the lower branches have 

 fallen, and the spot is a great solemn grove, its brown carpet 

 sparsely dotted with a few straggling Brambles or Huckle- 

 berry-shoots. But I think the most charming places of all are 

 those where a meadow is in process of capture by a surround- 

 ing forest, which is sending out colonies of seedlings from its 

 borders. Here we shall have a central area of grass some- 

 times entirely free from trees, encircled by conical young 

 White Pines from four to ten feet tall, and feathered to the 

 very ground — masses of delicate light green needles, smooth 

 and solid in outline but deliciously soft in texture. Back of 

 these will be the taller masses of the forest growing on fields 

 earlier abandoned, while in front of them, if we look closely, 

 the ground will be found covered with baby trees, tiny Pines 

 born last year or this year only. And if we come again in ten 

 years the whole field will be covered with seedlings, and the 

 conical soft green pyramids of to-day will be losing their lower 

 limbs and assuming the habit of maturity. I remember one 

 Pitch Pine, standing in the centre of a meadow surrounded 

 with White Pines, beneath which three years ago nothing 

 grew but grass. Now, as the encircling trees have sent out 

 their flights of seeds, its branches shelter a thick expanse of 

 tiny White Pines, from an inch to six inches in height. Those 

 who try to grow* Pines sometimes say it is not easy ; but Na- 

 ture seems to do the work without any trouble at all in this 

 vicinity. Indeed, after living here half a dozen summers, one 

 begins to feel that ere long we shall all be crowded into the 

 bay by the trees ; and so perhaps in time we too shall come 

 to the .state of mind expressed by old Aunt Keziah's words. 

 Meanwhile, however, if any one wants to see how trees grow 

 of themselves, and so to divine something of those processes 

 which built up the "primeval forest," he can find no better 

 place than this. Exhaustion of the soil is usually given as the 

 reason why these districts have so largely been abandoned by 

 the farmer, but Aunt Keziah lays all the blame on the eager- 

 ness of the young folks to journey cityward. And though 

 we know at least the partial truth of the other explanation, we 

 are tempted to believe her, for a soil does not seem exhausted 

 which can produce woods so easily as this. A little further 

 eastward, when one gets really on Cape Cod, one clearly reads 

 poverty of soil in the disappearance of many of our most 

 common trees and the almost universal sovereignty of the 

 Pitch Pine. But along this eastern shore of the great bay there 

 are more White Pines than Pitch Pines, and, in addition to the 

 other trees I have named, shrubs and vines of many sorts 

 grow by the way-side and along the woodland edges with mar- 

 velous luxuriance. For man's crops the soil may be as poor 

 as you will ; for Nature's most beautiful crops it seems, to 

 the eye of the uninitiated at least, a very good soil indeed. It 

 may be that wise men would say that, however long our woods 

 remain undisturbed, there will never be arboreal giants in the 

 land ; but it grows very beautiful trees of a smaller size to-day. 



Marion, Mass. M. G. V. R. 



Periodical Literature. 

 A Ride Through the Caucasian Mountains. - 



-II. 



AFTER leaving this forest the road descends to the river, 

 which for want of a bridge must be forded, and then crosses 

 a wide stretch of once cultivated country. Only a few years 

 ago this region supported a large population, but, finding 

 Russian rule insupportable, its inhabitants sought a new home 

 in Turkey, too often finding instead only worse suffering and 

 a speedy death. It will not be many decades, says Dr. Dieck, 

 before all traces of former cultivation will be overgrown, and 

 then there will be a fine chance for some exploring botanist 

 to surprise the world with sensational accounts of plants which 

 are indigenous to the region or have been introduced by natu- 

 ral means, for already garden-plants are beginning to domi- 

 nate in the wild-growing vegetation. Hazel and fruit-trees, 



