THE FOREST. 
207 
dying, are left standing for years, until at length they are shiv- 
ered and broken by the winds, or they crumble slowly away to 
a shapeless stump. There was no forester at hand to cut them 
down when the first signs of decay appeared ; they had no u^es 
then, now they have no value. Broken hmbs and dead bodies of 
great trees lie scattered through the forests ; there are spots where 
the winds seem to have battled with the woods — at every step 
one treads on fallen trunks, stretched in giant length upon the 
earth, this still clad in its armor of bark, that bare and moulder- 
ing, stained by green mildew, one a crumbling mass of fragments, 
while others, again, lie shrouded in beautiful mosses, long green 
hillocks marking the grave of trees slowly turning to dust. Young 
trees are frequently found growing upon these forest ruins ; if a 
giant pine or oak has been levelled by some storm, the mass of 
matted roots and earth will stand upright for years in the same 
position into which it was raised by the falling trunk, and occa- 
sionally a good-sized hemlock, or pine, or beech, is seen growing 
from the summit of the mass, which in itself is perhaps ten or 
twelve feet high. We have found a stout tree, of perhaps twen- 
ty years' growth, which has sprung from a chance seed, sown by 
the winds on the prostrate trunk of a fallen pine or chestnut, 
growing until its roots have stretched down the side of the moul- 
dering log, and reached the earth on both sides, thus holding the 
crumbling skeleton firmly in its young embrace. The decay of 
these dead trees is strangely slow ; prostrate pines have been 
known to last fifty years, undecayed, still preserving their sap ; 
and upright gray shafts often remain standing for years, until 
one comes to know them as familiarly as the living trees. In- 
stances are on record where they have thus remained erect in 
