206 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FARM 



trees and bushes; and thereafter it is a wood again, at first 

 impenetrably dense, but after many years, after time for the 

 formation of a permanent forest cover and for the death and 

 removal of the shaded undergrowth, it becomes open and 

 shadowy again. 



The thicket is thickest at the time when the shrubs have 

 reached their maximum and the young trees are beginning to 

 press them back again; and at no time is a wood more 

 interesting. Here one may sense the meaning of the struggle 

 for existence, the peaceful, effective, uncompromising, eternal 

 struggle of the battlefield of nature. Here is a forest society, 

 composed of a mixture of plants, large and small, that have 

 dwelt together for ages. It is temporarily upset by the 

 invasion of the woodman's ax, and is in process of readjust- 

 ment — of getting its balance again. Here are stumps dead 

 and rotting, and other stumps green and sprouting. Here are 

 poor standing remnants of a former forest growth. Here are 

 shrubs that once struggled along in the shadow, now luxuri- 

 ating in the light and crowding one another, and trying to 

 smother the small trees ere they get their heads above the 

 general coverlet of green. Outside, when the leaves are on, it 

 all has an aspect of rich verdure, but if one look underneath, 

 the abundance of dead stems there bears testimony of the 

 severity of the struggle. 



Woody plants dominate the situation, but they have 

 herbaceous associates, dwelling with them whether the cover 

 be forest or shrubbery. In the leaf-mold are the roots of 

 many little things — bloodroots andtrilliums, adder 's-tongues, 

 squirrel-corn, and other early blooming-flowers, that make 

 the most of the spring sunshine before the upper leaves come 

 out to shade them. Ferns, also, and thin wood grasses and 

 sedges and slender wood asters and goldenrods keep their 

 places in the intervals between the clumps, persisting through 

 the great struggle for place that goes on over their heads. 



