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 balanceagain. Here are stumps dead 
and rotting, and other stumpsgreenand 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 and trilliums, 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. 
