Niagara Falls 



1879 shrubs has not been disturbed, and where, from caving banks, 

 trees are not now exposed to excessive dryness at the root. 



Nor have I found any where else such tender effects of foliage 

 as were once to be seen in the drapery hanging down the wall of 

 rock on the American shore below the fall, and rolling up the 

 slope below it, or with that still to be seen in a favorable season 

 and under favorable lights, on the Canadian steeps and crags 

 between the falls and the ferry. 



All these distinctive qualities, — the great variety of the 

 indigenous perennials and annuals, the rare beauty of the old 

 woods, and the exceeding loveliness of the rock foliage, — I 

 believe to be a direct effect of the falls, and as much a part of its 

 majesty as the mist-cloud and the rainbow. 



They are all, as it appears to me, to be explained by the cir- 

 cumstance that at two periods of the year when the northern 

 American forest elsewhere is liable to suffer actual constitutional 

 depressions, that of Niagara is insured against like ills, and thus 

 retains youthful luxuriance to an unusual age. 



First, the masses of ice, which, every winter are piled to a 

 great height below the falls, and the great rushing body of ice- 

 cold water coming from the northern lakes in the spring, prevent 

 at Niagara the hardship under which trees elsewhere often suffer 

 through sudden checks to premature growth; and, second, when 

 droughts elsewhere occur, as they do, every few years, of such 

 severity that trees in full foliage droop and dwindle, and even 

 sometimes cast their leaves, the atmosphere at Niagara is more 

 or less moistened by the constantly evaporating spray of the 

 falls, and in certain situations frequently bathed by drifting 

 clouds of mist. 



Something of the beauty of the hanging foliage below the 

 falls is also probably due to the fact, that the effect of the frozen 

 spray upon it is equivalent to the horticultural process of " shorten- 

 ing in " ; compelling a denser and closer growth than is, under 



other circumstances, natural. 



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