32 ROTATION AND DISTRIBUTION. 



poplar, the aspen, and the pitch pine were abundant, 

 as they are now on similar soils. The preference of the 

 red maple for wet and miry soils is well known ; while 

 hard maple, oak, beech, and hickory do not prosper ex- 

 cept in strong alluvial tracts. A heavy growth of hard 

 timber indicates a superior soil ; pine indicates an inferior 

 one, if it has been left to the spontaneous action of 

 nature. In the primitive forest we were sure of finding 

 such relations of soil and species. They are not so 

 invariable since the operations of agriculture have inter- 

 rupted the true method of nature. 



When a wood has been burned, the process of renewal, 

 when left to nature, is much more tardy than if it had 

 been felled, since it can now be restored only by a regular 

 series of vegetable species, which must precede it, accord- 

 ing to certain inevitable laws. The soil, however, being 

 improved and fertilized by the ashes of the burnt tim- 

 ber, is in a chemical condition to support a luxuriant for- 

 est as soon as in the course of nature it can be planted 

 there. Trees will not immediately come iip from this 

 burnt ground as in a clearing ; and if they should appear, 

 they would mostly perish from the want of protection. 

 In the order of nature herbaceous plants are the first to 

 occupy the soU, and these are followed by a uniform suc- 

 cession of different species. There is an epUobium, or 

 willow herb, with elegant spikes of purple flowers, con- 

 spicuous in our meadows in August, which is one of the 

 earliest occupants of burnt ground, hence called fireweed 

 in Maine and Nova Scotia. The downy appendage to its 

 seeds causes it to be planted there by the winds immedi- 

 ately after the burning. The triUium appears also in 

 great abundance upon the blackened surface of the 

 ground in all wet places. Plants like the ginseng, the 

 erythronium, and the like, whose bulbs or tubers lie 

 buried deep in the mould, escape destruction, and come up 



