32 MODERN FOREST ECONOMY. 



From the time when arborescent vegetation entered on 

 the struggle for existence with the herbaceous vegetation 

 which may at first have taken possession of the soil, if 

 such there was, which struggle was to issue in the survival 

 of the fittest, up to the period when victory was secured 

 by the trees, and for ages thereafter, the forest was making 

 increase of itself like the growing babe, the growing boy, 

 the growing youth, and the man in his prime, up to middle 

 age and beyond it. There was waste going on ; again and 

 again, times innumerable, the leaves, one by one, died 

 and fell from the tree — one by one they fell, individually 

 uumissed, but in their totality considerable: that was 

 waste ; and other leaves and fruits were eaten ere they 

 were so mature as to fall. But beyond these a destruction 

 of whole trees — patriarchal trees, raonarchs in the wood — 

 occasioned by bird, or beast, or insect it may be, or by the 

 winds of heaven, was going ,on ali the while : a spray got 

 broken, or a leaf in falling carried with it a portion of the 

 bark ; the moisture of rain, or dew, or hoarfrost, or snow, 

 got access to the wound; the moisture evaporated, but 

 somehow or other the torn wood got oxydised, rotting as 

 does the stake planted in the ground, at the junction line 

 between wind and weather ; and the decay spread, slowly 

 it may be, very slowly perhaps, but there was no occasion 

 to take account of time. We are speaking of the working 

 of Him with whom a thousand years are as one day, while 

 at other times one day is a thousand years. The result 

 was the total destruction of the tree. It fell and perished. 

 But for ages the destruction was as nothing to the increase ; 

 waste went on, but the increase by growth exceeded this, 

 and the forest continued year by year, century by century, 

 to make increase of itself. Thus it continued till man 

 came upon the scene, and then began another era the 

 issue of which we have not yet seen. 



The recuperative power of a forest is wonderful ; but 

 with the coming of man upon the scene there came a 

 disturbing element against which it could maintain a 



