70 FOREST CULT\TEE AND 



sides of the barest rocks until they have found a 

 genial soil, however scanty, on the edge of a preci- 

 pice. Nature — ever active and laborious, ever wise 

 and beneficent — allows the tree thus to live, thus to 

 convert the solid bowlders finally into soil, and all the 

 time adds unceasingly to the treasures of the domin- 

 ions of man. But just as time, with its measured 

 terms in fleet course, passes irresistably onward and 

 irrevocably away, so also have we to await the ap- 

 proaching' time, which all our wishes cannot accel- 

 erate in its unalterable measure. 



" Onward its course the present keeps. 

 Onward the constant current sweeps. 



Till life is done ; 

 And did we judge of time aright. 

 The past and future in their flight 



Would be as one. 



Let no one fondly dream again 

 That hope and all her shadow-train 



Will not decay ; 

 Fleeting as were the dreams of old, 

 Bemembered like a tale that 's told ; 

 They pass away." 



Longfellow (from " ifanrigue") . 



We have, therefore, to await with patience these 

 measured terms before the child in its youthful impet- 

 uosity can reach the age of its highest hopes and sup- 

 posed glory — but, alas ! leaving often a far happier 

 phase behind ; or before a tree, from its youthful 

 grace, can have advanced to sturdy strength or lofty 

 height, to fulfill also its destiny and offer us its gifts. 

 We cannot call forth age at pleasure ; at best there is 

 involved a lapse of years before a timber-tree can 

 yield a plank, a beam, or even as much as a solid 

 post. 



J have ehdeavoredto arrive at some idea of the 



