General In str lections. 



as a vegetable, a tender thing. The frost affects it, 

 M'hen it affects hardly any other forest-tree. Its spring- 

 shoots are frequently killed by the frost, when the Ash, 

 the Beech, the Elm, and other trees, remain wholly un- 

 affected by it. But the effect of cold upon oaks must be 

 obvious to every man who has seen a thick oak wood cut 

 down, leaving, here and there, a tree which has been 

 thought too small for cutting. These trees never thrive 

 more. They stand stunned,'' as the woodmen very pro- 

 perly call it. They do not actually die; but they never 

 thrive more. What, then, must be the inevitable effect of 

 such a change of climate as that which is experienced by 

 the young oak which is taken out of a coppice to be planted 

 in an open common ? A coppice is always warm. In the 

 coldest days that we know, \v hen hail and sleet cut your face, 

 and when you are really pinched with the cold, go into a 

 coppice, and you arc warm. In the very hardest frosts, the 

 /ground is seldom frozen in, or near, the middle of a large 

 and well-set coppice of six year's growth, or upwards. 

 Even in that bleak and terribly cold country, New Bruns-' 

 wick, where the frost comes about the 7ih of November, 

 freezes the river St. John (a mile across) over in one night, 

 so that men walk across in the morning; whej-e, in 

 the open lands, the frost goes four feet down into the 

 solid ground; even in that country, if you, in the very 

 coldest weather, when, in the open air, you dare not 

 venture ten yards without protecting your hands and face 

 with fur; even there and then, if you go half a mile into 

 the woods, you are in a mild and pleasant climate. I have, 

 scores of times, gone to the edge of the woods, wrapped 

 U|) in flannels and blankets and furs, and, when I got in, 

 reduced my dress very nearly to an English one, and set 

 to squirrel-hunting, even with my gloves off. 



