XXIV. THE PASSING OF THE TREES 



"My heart is awed within me when I think 

 Of the great miracle that still goes on, 

 In silence, round me — the perpetual work 

 Of the creation, finished, yet renewed 

 Forever. Written on thy works I read 

 The lesson of thy own eternity. 

 Lol all grow, old and die — but see, again, 

 How on the faltering footsteps of decay 

 Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful youth 

 In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees 

 Wave not less proudly that their ancestors 

 Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost 

 One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet, 

 After the flight of untold centuries, 

 The freshness of her far beginning lies 

 And yet shall lie." 



— Bryant (Forest Hymn) 



What becomes of the giants of the forest when they fall? 

 A wise man of old said, "In the place where the tree falleth 

 there shall it lie." Yes, if it escape the woodcutter, it lies 

 there; but it does not lie very long. The great oak that 

 crashes to earth, crushing everything in its path, lies but one 

 growing season ere the underlings are green above it : a few 

 years more, and they are crowding into the upper light that it 

 once monopolized. Its building up was long — centuries long ; 

 but a decade is ample for its decay. And well it is for the 

 living that the dead do not longer encumber the ground, or 

 hold locked up in their stark bodies the materials needed for 

 the growth of a new generation. 



Nature makes of the dissolution of these imponderable 

 trunks a lightsome task. She proceeds, as ever, without 

 haste or noise, making use of frost and sun and rain and a long 

 succession of living agents. From the first souring of the sap 

 to the final mixing of the log-dust with the soil, she uses bac- 

 teria, molds and fungi ; and of the higher fungi, an interest- 

 ing succession of forms appears as the dissolution of the wood 



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