THE PEIMITIVE FOREST. 7 



confined in the workshops of a crowded manufacturing 

 town, and who hecome closely assimilated and lose those 

 marks of individual character by which they would be 

 distinguished if they had been reared in a state of free- 

 dom and in the open country. 



The primitive forest, in spite of its dampness, has al- 

 ways been subject to fires in dry seasons, which have 

 sometimes extended over immense tracts of country. 

 These fires were the dread of the early settlers, and 

 countless lives have been destroyed by their flames 

 often overwhelming entire villages. At the present time 

 the causes of fire in the woods are very numerous; 

 but before they were exposed to artificial sources of igni- 

 tion it may have arisen from spontaneous combustion, 

 caused by large accumulations of fermenting substances, 

 or from lightning, or from the accidental friction of the 

 trunks of half-prostrated trees crossing each other, and 

 moved by a high wind. The forests in every part of the 

 world have been subject to conflagrations; and there 

 seems to be no other means that could be used by nature 

 for removing old and worn-out forests, which contain 

 more combustible materials than any young woods. The 

 burned tracts in America are called barrens by the in- 

 habitants ; and as the vegetation on the surface is often 

 entirely destroyed, the spontaneous renewal of it would 

 display the gradual method of nature in restoring the 

 forest. The successions of plants, from the beautiful crim- 

 son fireweed, through all the gradations of tender herbs, 

 prickly bushes, and brambles, to shrubs and trees of in- 

 ferior stature, until all, if the soil be deep and fertile, are 

 supplanted by oaks, chestnuts, hickories, and other hard- 

 wood trees, are as regular and determinable as the courses 

 of the planets or the orders of the seasons. 



