CHARACTERISTICS OF TREES. 
289 
majesty, will be readily appreciated. There is neither symmetry 
nor thrift in its rough trunk and huge gnarled branches ; but 
there is a power and strength there, which represents the history of 
centuries of growth and battle with the elements. It is a scarred 
old veteran, a forest Jupiter, “a brave old oak.” 
Bryant thus apostrophizes one of these old monarchs : 
“Ye have no history. I cannot know 
Who, when the hill-side trees were hewn away, 
Haply two centuries since, bade spare this oak 
Leaning to shade with his irregular arms, 
Low-bent and long, the fount that from his roots 
Slips through a bed of cresses toward the bay. 
I know not who, but thank him that he left 
The tree to flourish where the acorn fell. 
And join these later days to that far time 
While yet the Indian hunter drew the bow 
In the dim woods, and the white woodman first 
Opened these fields to sunshine, turned the soil 
And strewed the wheat. An unremembered Past 
Broods like a presence, ’mid the long gray boughs 
Of this old tree, which has outlived so long 
The flitting generations of mankind.” 
The imagination is stirred to an indescribable affection or 
reverence for such ancient trunks that it is difficult to account 
for;—a something allied to the love or awe with which we regard 
the Deity. 
Among the sources of picturesque effect in old trees are the 
sharp lights and shades caused by the deep furrows and breaks in 
their bark,* the abrupt angles of their great limbs, and the broad 
openings through the masses of their foliage that allow the sun to 
fleck with bright lights parts of the tree which are surrounded with 
deep shadows ;—causing what artists call bold effects. These are 
always inferior in young trees, though there is a vast difference in 
different species of trees of similar age and size in their tendency 
to produce these effects. 
* At Montgomery Place, near Barrytown, on the Hudson, are some old locust trees with bark 
so deeply furrowed as to make their trunks picturesque to an extraordinary degree, so that this 
character is a sufficient offset to the meagreness of their stunted tops to save them from destruc¬ 
tion. A city visitor there once asked the proprietor why she did not have the bark cut off—“it 
looks so very rough 1 ” 
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