XII. WINTER VERDURE OF THE FARM 



"The damsel donned her kirtle sheen; 

 The hall was dressed with holly green; 

 Forth to the wood did merry-men go 

 To gather in the mistletoe." 



— Walter Scott (Marmion). 



In winter when the fields are brown, the pastures deserted, 

 the birds flown, and the deciduous trees stark as though dead, 

 the evergreens preserve for us the chief signs of life in the 

 out-of-doors. They mollify the bleakness of the landscape. 

 So we cover with them the bleakest slopes, we line them up 

 for windbreaks, and we plant them cosily about our homes. 



Nature has used the larger coniferous evergreens on a 

 grand scale, covering vast areas of the earth with them and 

 developing a whole population to dwell among them. Two 

 species of pine have been among the most important of our 

 country's natural resources: the white pine at the North 

 and the pitch pine at the South; and these two have con- 

 ditioned the settlement of the regions in which they occur. 

 Both have been ruthlessly sacrificed, and we have but a 

 poor and shabby remnant of them left. At the North the 

 white pine was cut first; then the spruce, and then the hem- 

 lock. This was the order of their usefulness to us. Old 

 fences made of enduring pine stumps surround fields where 

 there are no living pine trees to be seen, bearing silent testi- 

 mony to their size and their aforetime abundance. 



Our evergreens, broadly considered, fall into two groups of 

 very different character. These are the narrow-leaved 

 evergreens (the leaves we call "needles"), mostly conifers, 

 and the broad-leaved evergreens. The former are mostly 

 trees of the forest cover; the latter are mostly underlings. 

 The former are mostly valuable timber trees; the latter have 

 little practical importance. The former are plants of an 



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