



Lorillard Mansion. The total area occupied by the trees on both 

 sides of the river is between thirty-five and forty acres. 



While this area is mostly covered by the hemlock spruces, and 

 although they form its predominant vegetation, other trees are by 

 no means lacking; beech, chestnut, sweet birch, red maple, 

 hickory, oaks, dogwood, tulip-tree, and other trees occur, and 

 their foliage protects the hemlocks from the sun in summer to a 

 very considerable extent ; there are no coniferous trees other than 

 the hemlocks, however, within the forest proper. The shade is 

 too dense for the existence of much low vegetation, and this is 

 also unable to grow at all vigorously in the soil formed largely 

 of the decaying resinous hemlock leaves ; it is only in open places 

 left by the occasional uprooting of a tree or trees by gales that 

 we see any considerable number of shrubs or herbaceous plants, 

 their seeds brought into the forest by wind or by birds. In fact, 

 the floor of the forest is characteristically devoid of vegetation, a 

 feature shown by other forests of hemlock situated further north. 

 The contrast in passing from the hemlock woods to the contiguous 

 hardwood area which borders them to the west and north, toward 

 the museum building and the herbaceous grounds, is at once ap- 

 parent, for here we see a luxuriant growth of shrubs and of herbs, 

 including many of our most interesting wild flowers. 



The seeds of many kinds of plants growing outside the hem- 

 lock forest are yearly transported into it by the wind and by birds, 

 but, as I have said, grow very sparingly ; the seeds of the hem- 

 lock itself do little if at all better; they cannot germinate im- 

 mediately under the trees which bear them, but spaces exposed to 

 the light are soon occupied by seedling hemlocks, and it is in this 

 way that the forest is perpetuated ; young trees may be seen in 

 considerable numbers in places open to the sky along the old paths 

 and trails and along the margins of the forest. 



The soil of this forest is in most places thin, often a mere 

 shallow layer immediately upon the gneissic and schistose rocks 

 which underlie it, composed of the decaying particles of the rocks 

 and of the rotted products of countless annual leaf-falls ; the roots 

 of the trees accommodate themselves to this condition, lengthen- 

 ing in all directions in their search for food, and often assuming 

 unusual and sometimes grotesque forms in penetrating crevices, 

 or exposed where the rain has washed the soil away. A capital 

 illustration of this was to be seen several years ago when a giant 

 tree was uprooted during a violent storm ; it had scarcely any 

 soil under il, coming away and leaving the rock bare over several 

 square yards, but its roots reached many feet all around and it 



