158 



AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



lings are growing up everywhere, and shoots from the 

 old stumps are always sprouting up into the light, to 

 perpetuate its usefulness and to form another forest, 

 when this shall have gone into de- 

 cay or shall have been cut down for 

 man's utility. What would we do 

 without the old woods? What a 

 vast product the forest is — these 

 immense tree growths, and their 

 tough, fibrous stems and leafy can- 

 opies — made over into a serviceable 

 form by the lumberman, and to be 

 preserved and studied by the for- 

 ester; and yet existing, after all, not 

 for man's enjoyment alone, but for 

 the well-being of all the life about 

 us! And does not this old woods, 

 in its little usefulness to us, typify 

 our larger belts of timber every- 

 where all over this broad land? 



I am impressed with the age of 

 the trees. Centuries it has taken to 

 elevate them to their proud position, 

 and some will last a century longer, 

 even when cut down and made over 

 into useful lumber. Some of the 

 big oaks lately felled in the woods 

 were over three hundred years of 

 age. One of the large elms was 

 nearly as old. And I have been in the Adirondacks, 

 and in some of the great oak and pine forests of 

 the South and West, and have found the trees even 



A VETERAN OF THREE HUNDRED. 



