THE FOREST 
211 
der gracile stems, throwing out their branches in light and airy 
spray. So slight and supple are the stems of this younger race, 
that trees of thirty and forty, ay, even fifty feet in height, 
often bend low beneath the weight of the winter's snow upon 
their naked branches ; some of them never regain their upright 
position, others gradually resume it as their trunks gain strength. 
Upon a wild wood-road near the lake shore there is a natural 
green archway, formed in this manner by two tall young tiees 
accidentally bending toward each other from opposite sides of 
the road, until their branches meet over the track ; the effect is 
very pretty, one of those caprices of the forest world, which in 
older times might have passed for the work of some elfin wood- 
man. 
It is to be feared that few among the younger generation now 
springing up will ever attain to the dignity of the old forest trees. 
Very large portions of these woods are already of a second growth, 
and trees of the greatest size are becoming every year more rare. 
It quite often happens tliat you come upon old stuxiips of much 
larger dimensions than any living trees about them ; some of 
these are four, and a few five feet or more in diameter. Occa- 
sionally, we still find a pine erect of this size ; one was felled the 
other day, which measured five feet in diameter. There is an elm 
about a mile from the village seventeen feet in girth, and not 
long since we heard of a bass-wood or linden twenty-eight feet 
in circumference. But among the trees now standing, even those 
which are sixty or eighty feet in height, many are not more than 
four, or five, or six feet in girth. The pines, especially, reach a 
surprising elevation for their bulk. 
As regards the ages of the larger trees, one frequently finds 
