in part from its deca.y, together with the multitudinous 

 other life that haunts it, largely perish with it. Such 

 a forest is a wonderful complex of mutually dependent 

 forms, a complex anciently established which once oblit- 

 erated in a region can never be restored. It passes 

 quickly, too, destroyed by axe and fire. No forest now 

 exists in Europe, botanists say, that shows the early, 

 natural condition of the European woodland; its very 

 type is matter for conjecture. 



The typical trees of the Acadian forest, those that 

 give it its peculiar character, are the northern evergreens, 

 the cone-bearing pines and firs and spruces, the hem- 

 locks and the arbor vitae. It is of these one thinks in 

 picturing to oneself the region. Maine itself is called 

 the Pine Tree State; its eastern coast, ''The Land of 

 Pointed Firs." Longfellow sets the Acadian scene for 

 us in Evangeline with "This is the forest primeval, 

 the murmuring i3ines and the hemlocks," and far out 

 to sea in early, long-voyaged days the approaching sailor 

 welcomed with delight the pungent forest fragrance. 



But mingled with these evergreens which give the for- 

 est its prevailing character there are abundant other 

 trees that lend their beauty to the scene. Champlain 

 describes the oaks growing as in a park upon one side of 

 the Penobscot Eiver, when he ascended it in 1604, with 

 pine forest on the other. Deer and bears grow fat in 

 autumn on the beechnuts in the wilder woods. The two 

 noblest birch trees in the world, the Canoe Birch, with 

 its pure white trunk, and the Yellow Birch, which in 

 the North outstrips the oak itself in size, find here their 

 native home. Ash and maple are abundant. Poplars, 

 mingled with Paper Birches, turn into rivers of gold 

 amongst the somber evergreens in fall, and nowhere is 

 the autumn coloring more brilliant or of richer contrast. 



Underneath the taller trees, wherever an even partial 

 break occurs, shrubs and lesser trees spring up in wide 

 variety; thorns and wild plum trees, beautiful in flower 



4 



