PINES. 
191 
the work, those old pines were there. Unchanged themselves, 
they stand surrounded by objects over all of which a great 
change has passed. The open valley, the half-shorn hills, the 
paths, the flocks, the buildings, the woods in their second growth, 
even the waters in the different images they reflect on their bo- 
som, the very race of men who come and go, all are different 
from what they were ; and those calm old trees seem to heave 
the sigh of companionless age, as their coned heads rock slowly 
in the winds. 
The aspect of the wood tells its own history, so widely does it 
differ in character from the younger groves waving in gay luxu- 
riance over the valley. In the midst of smooth fields it speaks 
so clearly of the wilderness, that it is not the young orchard of 
yesterday's planting, but the aged native pines which seem the 
strangers on the ground. The pine of forest growth never fails 
to have a very marked character of its own ; the gray shaft rises 
clear and unbroken by bend or bough, to more than half its great 
elevation, thence short horizontal limbs in successive fan-like 
growth surround the trunk to its summit, which is often crowned 
with a low crest of upright branches. The shaft is very fine 
from its great height and the noble simplicity of its lines ; in col- 
oring, it is a pure clear gray, having the lightest and the smooth- 
est bark of all its tribe, and only occasionally mottled with patches 
of Hchens. The white pine of this climate gathers but few mosses, 
imless in very moist situations; the very oldest trees are often 
quite free from them. Indeed, this is a tree seldom seen with the 
symptoms of a half-dead and decaying condition about it, like so 
many others ; the gray line of a naked branch may be observed 
here and there, perhaps, a sign of age, but it generally preserves 
