68 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
at them. Our scientific names convey a very par¬ 
tial information, they suggest certain thoughts 
only. It does not occur to me that there are 
other names for most of these objects given by 
a people who stood between me and them, who 
had better senses than our race. How little I 
know of that arbor vitce when I have heard only 
what science can tell me. It is but a word, it 
is not a tree of life. But there are twenty 
words for the tree and its different parts which 
the Indian gave, which are not in our botanies, 
which imply a more practical and vital science. 
He used it every day. He was well acquainted 
with its wood, its bark, and its leaves. No sci¬ 
ence does more than arrange what knowledge 
we have of any class of objects. But generally 
speaking how much more conversant was the 
Indian with any wild animal or plant than we, 
and in his language is implied all that intimacy, 
as much as ours is expressed in our language, 
How many words in his language about a moose, 
or birch bark, and the like. The Indian stood 
nearer to wild nature than we. The wildest 
and noblest quadrupeds, even the largest fresh 
water fish, some of the wildest and noblest birds, 
and the fairest flowers have actually receded as 
we advanced, and we have but the most distant 
knowledge of them. A rumor has come down 
to us that the skin of a lion was seen and his 
