218 
THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. 
planted^ or spring up spontaneously; and this sufficiently 
accounts for what travellers think so strange in a forest 
country, the general want of trees about the homestead, road- 
sides, &c. : farmers in general being too much employed to 
pay attention to planting for ornament. 
C. — Let us walk into the forest. — What a sombre gloom 
prevails ; the more striking, as contrasting with the bright 
sunlight we have left. Scarce a ray here and there can pe- 
netrate through the leafy canopy, that almost fatigues the 
eye to look up to it. Yet that is the most cheerful part of 
the scene ; for there the leaves, so brightly green, are dan- 
cing and sparkling in the light ; while we, far below, are in 
shade. 
jP. — The gloom and solitude of the interior of the forest 
have invariably a solemnizing influence on my mind : an 
awe like that which one feels amidst the timeworn pillars of 
an ancient cathedral ; which these grey and moss-grown 
trunks greatly resemble. 
C. — How old do you suppose these large elms to be ? 
F, — I cannot tell : probably they were rearing their slen- 
der stems years before Jacques Cartier explored the St. Law- 
rence, or even before the chivalrous Genoese launched his 
frail bark on the grim Atlantic. The concentric circles 
around the heart of a tree are, however, believed to give a 
correct estimate of its age, one being made every year : we 
can count the rings in some of these logs that have been 
felled. — — 
C. — I have counted one ; an ash of about eighteen inches 
in diameter, which has but one hundred and sixty circles. 
jP. — I chose this hemlock log, about two feet in diame- 
ter : if this be a true criterion, this tree must be three hundred 
and ninety-five years old, which carries us back to a period 
fifty years before the first voyage of Columbus. But what 
is this ? what is the age of the largest tree in these forests 
