274 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
The 
substitutes 
of nature. 
Laurel and 
rhodo- 
dendron. 
The bushes make no such show on the face 
of the earth as the trees, though perhaps they 
cover more territory ; and, moreover, they are 
frequently a secondary rather than a primary 
growth—a substitute rather than an original. 
Nature is fertile in resources, and wherever the 
earth is scarred by fire, tempest, or the axe, an 
effort is put forth to cover the spot with a new 
growth. Many of the shrubs and bushes and 
small-bunched thickets of the woods and hills 
are the result. In the coal regions of Pennsyl- 
vania, where the timber has been destroyed and 
many of the valleys have been turned into mere 
sluices and drainways for the black waters of 
coal mines, the laurel and the rhododendron 
grow in great profusion, covering valley, hill, 
and mountain for miles at a stretch. In the 
early summer, when they are in bloom, they are 
really splendid in effect. All the mountain 
seems in blossom, and along the ridges the color 
is banked up against the blue sky in pink and 
red clonds. In Southern California nature was 
probably never prodigal in the planting of forest- 
trees ; but the neglect is atoned for by almost 
endless varieties of small bushes and trees that 
robe the mountains and the foothills in a mantle 
of many colors at all seasons of the year. Be- 
