806 
THE ARTIFICIAL FOREST. 
smaller trees around it are felled, the swaying of the tree from 
the action of the wind mechanically produces separations 
between the layers of annual grow T th, and greatly diminishes 
the value of the timber. 
The same defect is often observed in pines which, from 
some accident of growth, have much overtopped their fellows 
in the virgin forest. The white pine, growing in the fields, or 
in open glades in the woods, is totally different from the true 
forest tree, both in general aspect and in quality of wood. Its 
stem is much shorter, its top less tapering, its foliage denser 
and more inclined to gather into tufts, its branches more 
numerous and of larger diameter, its wood shows much more 
distinctly the divisions of annual growth, is of coarser grain, 
harder and more difficult to work into mitre joints. Inter¬ 
mixed with the most valuable pines in the American forests, 
are met many trees of the character I have just described. 
The lumbermen call them u saplings,” and generally regard 
them as different in species from the true white pine, but bot¬ 
anists are unable to establish a distinction between them, and 
as they agree in almost all respects with trees grown in the 
open grounds from known white-pine seedlings, I believe their 
peculiar character is due to unfavorable circumstances in their 
early growth. The pine, then, is an exception to the general 
rule as to the inferiority of the forest to the open-ground tree. 
The pasture oak and pasture beech, on the contrary, are well 
known to produce far better timber than those grown in the 
woods, and there are few trees to which the remark is not 
equally applicable.* 
* It is often laid down as a universal law, that the wood of trees of 
slow vegetation is superior to that of quick growth. This is one of those 
commonplaces by which men love to shield themselves from the labor of 
painstaking observation. It has, in fact, so many exceptions, that it may 
be doubted whether it is in any sense true. Most of the cedars are slow 
of growth ; but while the timber of some of them is firm and durable, that 
of others is light, brittle, and perishable. The hemlock spruce is slower 
of growth than the pines, but its wood is of very little value. The pasture 
oak and beech show a breadth of grain—and, of course, an annual incre- 
