THE PERSONALITY OF TREES 813 



end. The victor shoots up tall and straight, 

 stamping and choking out the lives at his side, as 

 surely as if his weapons were teeth and claws 

 instead of delicate root-fibres and soughing 

 foliage. 



The contest with its fellows is only the first of 

 many. The same elements which help to give it 

 being and life are ever ready to catch it unawares, 

 to rend it limb from limb, or by patient, long- 

 continued attack bring it crashing to the very 

 dust from which sprang the seed. 



We see a mighty spruce whose black leafage has 

 waved above its fellows for a century or more, 

 paying for its supremacy by the distortion of 

 every branch. Such are to be seen clinging to the 

 rocky shores of Fundy, every branch and twig 

 curved toward the land; showing the years of 

 battUng with constant gales and blizzards. Like 

 giant weather-vanes they stand, and, though there 

 is no elasticity in their limbs and they are gnarled 

 and scarred, yet our hearts warm in admiration 

 of their decades of patient watching beside the 

 troubled waters. For years to come they will 

 defy every blast the storm god can send against 

 them, until, one wild day, when the soil has grown 

 scanty around the roots of one of the weakest, it 

 will shiver and tremble at some terrific onslaught 

 of wind and sleet; it will fold its branches closer 

 about it and, like the Indian chieftains, who per- 

 haps in years past occasionally watched the wa- 



