50 AT THE NORTH OF BEARCAMP WATER. 
skin. Some of the beeches seemed to have be¬ 
gun life in mid-air, for their tranks rested upon 
tripods or polypods of naked and spreading 
roots, which held them two or even three feet 
from the surface of the soil. In other cases 
these polypods clasped great boulders in their 
unyielding embrace, showing that the beech in 
its infancy had taken root upon the top of the 
rock, and year by year extended its thirsty ten¬ 
tacles lower and lower down the sides of its 
mossy foundation until the soil was reached. 
Then the hungry sapling, fed for so long on 
meagre supplies of food and water, must have 
expanded with sudden vigor, while its roots 
grew strong and gripped the rock in tighter and 
tighter embrace. The only way of accounting 
for the empty polypods seemed to be to suppose 
the trees to have sprouted upon stumps prone 
to decay, or upon rocks capable of rapid disin¬ 
tegration. Many of the glimpses through these 
beech woods reminded me of the grotesque for¬ 
est pictures which are produced so frequently 
in German woodcuts. 
Huge maples, with bark resembling that of 
ancient oaks, formed an important part of the 
forest, and so did canoe birches of various ages, 
solitary white pines of immense height, and old- 
growth spruces, the last named becoming more 
and more numerous as our road gained higher 
