Part 2

During this primitive condition of the country, the forest, having been left for centuries entirely to nature, would have formed a very intelligible geological chart. If we could have taken an extensive view of the New England forest, before any considerable inroads had been made by the early settlers, from an elevated stand on the coast, we should have beheld a dense and almost universal covering of trees. From this stand we might also trace the geological character of the soil, and its different degrees of fertility, dryness, and moisture, by the predominance of certain species and the absence of others. The undulations upon this vast ocean of foliage would come from the elevations and depressions of the ground; for the varying heights of the different assemblages of species upon the same level could hardly be perceived by a distant view. The lowest parts of this wooded region were at that period covered very generally with a crowded growth of the northern cypress, or white cedar. These evergreen swamps would constitute the darkest ground of the picture. The deep alluvial tracts would be known by the deciduous character of their woods and their lighter and brighter verdure, and the dry, sandy and diluvial plains and the gravelly hills and eminences by their white birches and tremulous poplars, their stunted pitch-pines and dwarfish junipers. For a century past the woods have been cleared mostly from the alluvial tracts; and the oaks, the hickories, the chestnuts, and other hard-wood trees, the primitive occupants of the rich and deep soils, have been succeeded in great measure by trees of softer wood, that originally grew on inferior land. The wooded aspect of the country cannot any longer be considered, as formerly, a good geological chart, except in some parts of Maine and the adjoining British Provinces.

One of the conditions most remarkable in a primitive forest is the universal dampness of the ground. The second growth of timber, especially if the surface were entirely cleared, stands upon a drier foundation. This greater dryness is caused by the absence of those vast accumulations of vegetable _débris_ that rested on the ground before it was disturbed. A greater evaporation also takes place under the second growth, because the trees are of inferior size and stand more widely apart. Another character of a primitive forest is the crowded assemblage of trees and their undergrowth, causing great difficulty in traversing it. Innumerable straggling vines, many of them covered with thorns, like the green-brier, intercept our way. Immense trunks of trees, prostrated by hurricanes, lie in our path, and beds of moss of extreme thickness cover a great part of the surface, saturated with moisture. The trees are also covered with mosses, generated by the shade and dampness; and woody vines, like the climbing fern, the poison ivy, and the ampelopsis, fastened upon their trunks and trailing from their branches, make the wood in many places like the interior of a grotto. Above all, the traveller would notice the absence of those pleasant wood-paths that intersect all our familiar woods, and would find his way only by observing those natural appearances that serve as a compass to the Indian and the forester.

In primitive woods there is but a small proportion of perfectly formed trees; and these occur only in such places as permit some individuals to stand in an isolated position, and spread out their arms to their full capacity. When rambling in a wood we take note of several conditions which are favorable to this full expansion of their forms. On the borders of a lake, a prairie, or an open moor, or of an extensive quarry that projects above the soil, the trees will extend their branches into the opening; but as they are crowded on their inner side, they are only half developed. This expansion, however, is on the side that is exposed to view; hence the incomparable beauty of a wood on the borders of a lake or pond, on the banks of a river as viewed from the water, and on the circumference of a densely wooded islet.

Fissures and cavities are frequent in large rocks not covered with soil, allowing solitary trees which have taken root in them to acquire their full proportions. In such places, and on eminences that rise suddenly above the forest level, with precipitous sides, overtopping the surrounding woods, we find individual trees possessing the character of standards, like those we see by roadsides and in open fields. But perfectly formed trees can only be produced in openings and on isolated elevations such as I have described; and it is evident that these favorable circumstances must be rare. The trees in a forest are like those human beings who from their infancy have been confined in the workshops of a crowded manufacturing town, and who become closely assimilated and lose those marks of individual character by which they would be distinguished if they had been reared in a state of freedom and in the open country.

The primitive forest, in spite of its dampness, has always been subject to fires in dry seasons, which have sometimes extended over immense tracts of country. These fires were the dread of the early settlers, and countless lives have been destroyed by their flames often overwhelming entire villages. At the present time the causes of fire in the woods are very numerous; but before they were exposed to artificial sources of ignition it may have arisen from spontaneous combustion, caused by large accumulations of fermenting substances, or from lightning, or from the accidental friction of the trunks of half-prostrated trees crossing each other, and moved by a high wind. The forests in every part of the world have been subject to conflagrations; and there seems to be no other means that could be used by nature for removing old and worn-out forests, which contain more combustible materials than any young woods. The burned tracts in America are called barrens by the inhabitants; and as the vegetation on the surface is often entirely destroyed, the spontaneous renewal of it would display the gradual method of nature in restoring the forest. The successions of plants, from the beautiful crimson fireweed, through all the gradations of tender herbs, prickly bushes, and brambles, to shrubs and trees of inferior stature, until all, if the soil be deep and fertile, are supplanted by oaks, chestnuts, hickories, and other hard-wood trees, are as regular and determinable as the courses of the planets or the orders of the seasons.

THE ASH.

It is interesting to note the changes that take place from one season to another in the comparative beauty of certain trees. The Ash, for example, during the early part of October, is one of the most beautiful trees of the forest, exceeded only by the maple in variety of tinting. In summer, too, but few trees surpass it in quality of foliage, disposed in flowing irregular masses, light and airy, but not thin, though allowing the branches to be traced through it, even to their extremities. It has a well-rounded head, neither so regular as to be formal, nor so broken as to detract from its peculiar grace. When standing with other trees in midsummer, in the border of a wood, or mingled with the standards by the roadside, the Ash would be sure to attract admiration. But no sooner have the leaves fallen from its branches than it takes rank below almost all other trees, presenting a stiff, blunt, and awkward spray, and an entire want of that elegance it affects at other seasons.

The Ash is a favorite in Europe, though deficient there in autumnal tints. It is a tree of the first magnitude, and has been styled in classical poetry the Venus of the forest, from the general beauty of its proportions and flowing robes. The English, however, complain of the Ash, on account of its tardy leafing in the spring and its premature denudation in the autumn. “Its leaf,” says Gilpin, “is much tenderer than that of the oak, and sooner receives impression from the winds and frost. Instead of contributing its tint, therefore, in the wane of the year, among the many colored offspring of the woods, it shrinks from the blast, drops its leaf, and in each scene where it predominates leaves wide blanks of desolate boughs amid foliage yet fresh and verdant. Before its decay we sometimes see its leaf tinged with a fine yellow, well contrasted with the neighboring greens. But this is one of nature’s casual beauties. Much oftener its leaf decays in a dark, muddy, unpleasing tint.”

The Ash is remarkable for a certain trimness and regularity of proportion, and it seldom displays any of those breaks so conspicuous in the outlines of the hickory, which in many points it resembles. The trunk rises to more than an average height before it is subdivided; but we do not see the central shaft above this subdivision, as in the poplar and the fir. Lateral branches seldom shoot from the trunk, save, as I have sometimes observed, a sort of bushy growth, surrounding it a little below the angles made by the lower branches. It is called in Europe “the painters’ tree.” But George Barnard, alluding to this fact, remarks: “Unlike the oak, the Ash does not increase in picturesqueness with old age. The foliage becomes rare and meagre, and its branches, instead of hanging loosely, often start away in disagreeable forms.”

North America contains a greater number of species of the genus _Fraxinus_ than any other part of the globe. But three of these only are common in New England,—the white, the red, and the black Ash. The first is the most frequent both in the forest and by the roadsides, the most beautiful, and the most valuable for its timber. All the species have pinnate and opposite leaves, and opposite branches in all the recent growth; but as the tree increases in size, one of the two invariably becomes abortive, so that we perceive this opposite character only in the spray. The leaflets are mostly in sevens, not so large nor so unequal as in the similar foliage of the hickory.

The white and the red Ash have so nearly the same external characters, that it requires some study to distinguish them. They do not differ in their ramification, nor in their autumnal hues. The black Ash may be readily identified by the leaves, which are sessile, and like those of the elder; also by the dark bluish color of the buds and newly formed branches, and the slenderness of its proportions. It seldom attains a great height or size, and is chiefly confined to swamps and muddy soils. The wood of this species is remarkable for strength and elasticity. The remarks of George Barnard respecting the localities of the Ash in Europe will apply to the American species: “Though seen everywhere, its favorite haunt is the mountain stream, where its branches hang gracefully over the water, adding much beauty to the scene. It is to be met with in every romantic glen and glade, now clinging with half-covered roots to a steep, overhanging cliff, and breaking with its light, elegant foliage the otherwise too abrupt line, or with its soft warm green relieving the monotonous coloring of the rocks or the sombre gray of some old ruin.”

There are some remarkable superstitions and traditionary notions connected with the Ash-tree. The idea that it is offensive, and even fatal, to serpents, is not of modern origin, though not a rustic laborer can be found who would not consider an Ash-tree planted before his house as a charm against their intrusion. According to Pliny, if a serpent be surrounded on one side by fire and on the other by a barricade of the leaves and branches of the Ash-tree, he will escape through the fire, rather than through its fatal boughs. It is related in the Edda that man was first created from the wood of this tree, and it is not improbable that this superstition has some connection with the fable of Adam and Eve, and through this with the supposed antipathy of the serpent for the Ash-tree.

There is a saying in Great Britain, that, if the Ash puts forth its leaves before the oak, the following summer will be wet; but if the leafing of the oak precedes that of the Ash, it will be dry. I am not aware that any such maxim has obtained credence in the United States.

ANIMALS OF THE PRIMITIVE FOREST.

European travellers in this country frequently allude to the American forest as remarkable for its solitude and deficiency of animal life. Captain Hardy remarks that a foreigner is struck with surprise, when rambling through the bush, at the scarcity of birds, rabbits, and hares, and is astonished when in the deepest recesses of the wild country he sees but little increase of their numbers. When paddling his canoe through lake and river, he will startle but few pairs of exceedingly timid waterfowl where in Europe they swarm in multitudes. This scarcity of animals, I would remark, is not peculiar to the American wilderness. The same fact has been observed in extensive forests both in Europe and Asia; and in proportion as the traveller penetrates into their interiors he finds a smaller number of animals of almost every species. Birds, insects, and quadrupeds will multiply, like human beings, in a certain ratio with the progress of agriculture, so long as there remains a sufficiency of wild wood to afford them a refuge and a home. They use the forest chiefly for shelter, and the open grounds for forage; the woods are their house, the meadows their farm.

I had an opportunity for observing these facts very early in life, when making a pedestrian tour through several of the States. I commenced my journey in autumn, and being alone, I was led to take note of many things which, had any one accompanied me, would have escaped my observation. After passing a few weeks of the winter in Nashville, I directed my course through Tennessee and Virginia, and was often led through extensive ranges of forest. I never saw birds in any part of the United States so numerous as in the woods adjoining the city of Nashville, which was surrounded with immense cornfields and cotton plantations. But while walking through the country I could not help observing the scarcity of birds and small quadrupeds in the woods whenever I was at a long distance from any village or habitation. Sometimes night would draw near before I had reached a hamlet or farm-house, where I might take lodging. On such occasions the silence of the woods increased my anxiety, which was immediately relieved upon hearing the cardinal or the mocking-bird, whose cheerful notes always indicated my approach to cultivated fields and farms.

That this scarcity of animal life is not peculiar to the American forest we have the testimony of St. Pierre, who says of the singing birds: “It is very remarkable that all over the globe they discover an instinct which attracts them to the habitations of man. If there be but a single hut in the forest, all the singing birds of the vicinity come and settle round it. Nay, they are not to be found except in places which are inhabited. I have travelled more than six hundred leagues through the forests of Russia, but never met with small birds except in the neighborhood of villages. On making the tour of fortified places in Russian Finland with the general officers of the corps of engineers with which I served, we travelled sometimes at the rate of twenty leagues a day without seeing on the road either village or bird. But when we perceived the sparrows fluttering about, we concluded we must be near some inhabited place. In this indication we were never once deceived.”

It may be remarked, however, that birds and quadrupeds do not seek the company of man when they congregate near his habitations. They are attracted by the increased amount of all their means of subsistence that follows the cultivation of the land. The granivorous birds, no less than the insect-feeders, are benefited by the extension of agriculture. Even if no cereal grains were raised, the cultivated fields would supply them, in the product of weeds alone, more sustenance than a hundred times the same area in forest. Before there were any settlements of white men in this country, birds and small quadrupeds must have congregated chiefly about the wooded borders of prairies, on the banks of rivers, in fens and cranberry meadows, and around the villages of the red man. Their numbers over the whole continent were probably much smaller than at the present time, notwithstanding the merciless destruction of them by gunners and trappers.

There are but few tribes of animals that may be supposed to thrive only in the wild forest; and even these, if unmolested by man, would always find a better subsistence in a half-cultivated country abounding in woods of sufficient extent to afford them shelter and a nursery for their young, than in a continuous wilderness. Beasts of prey, however, are destroyed by man in the vicinity of all his settlements, to protect himself and his property from their attacks, and game-birds and animals of the chase are recklessly hunted both for profit and amusement. In Europe the clearing of the original forest was so gradual that the wild animals multiplied more rapidly with the progress of agriculture. Civilization advanced so slowly, and the arts made such tardy and gradual progress, that all species enjoyed considerable immunity from man. The game-birds and animals of the chase were not only preserved in forests attached to princely estates, but they were also protected by game-laws at a time when such laws were less needful because so few of the peasantry were accustomed to the use of the gun. While the royal forests yielded these creatures a shelter and abode, the cultivated lands near their bounds afforded them subsistence; and they must have multiplied more rapidly in proportion to the increase of human population than in America after its settlement, where very different circumstances and events were witnessed.

America was colonized and occupied by civilized people, and the forests were swept away with a rapidity unprecedented in the history of man. Every pioneer was a hunter provided with guns and ammunition; every male member of his family over seven years of age was a gunner and a trapper. The sparse inhabitants of the forest, which if unmolested, as in the early period of European civilization, would have multiplied in proportion to their increased means of subsistence, have been, on the contrary, shot by the gunner, insnared by the trapper, and wantonly destroyed by boys for amusement, until some species have been nearly exterminated. Instead of increasing in a ratio with the supplies of their natural food, many tribes of them are now more scarce than they were in the primitive forest. The small birds alone, whose prolific habits and diminutive size were their protection, have greatly multiplied.

But even if birds and quadrupeds were unmolested by man, there are some tribes that would prefer to reside in the deep wood, while others would fix their abode in orchards and gardens. The wild pigeon has not been favored in any respect by the clearing of the forest. The food of this species is abundantly supplied in the wilds of nature in the product of beechen woods, hazel copses, groves of the chinquapin oak, and of the shores of lakes and arms of the sea covered with Canada rice and the maritime pea-vine. Their immense powers of flight enable them to transport themselves to new feeding-grounds after any present stock is exhausted, and to wing their way over hundreds of miles between their different repasts. This cannot be said of the grouse, the turkey, and the partridge, whose feeble powers of flight confine them to a narrow extent of territory; and these birds must have been frequently robbed of their farinaceous stores by flocks of wild pigeons during their itinerant foraging.

There are many species of birds which we associate with the wild wood because they breed and find shelter there, but if we watched their habits we should learn that even these solitary birds make the cultivated grounds their principal feeding-places. Such are the quail, the partridge, and very many of our game-birds. The quail and the partridge are omnivorous, but, like our common poultry, are more eager to seize a grub or an insect than a grain of corn. A potato-field is hardly less valuable to a flock of quails than a field of corn, and affords more sustenance to the snipe and the woodcock than any other grounds. But these birds, as well as others, have diminished as those natural advantages have increased that should promote their multiplication.

Even our sylvias and thrushes, the most timid of all the winged tribe, birds hardly ever seen except in lonely woods, multiply with the clearing of the country and the increased abundance of their insect food. The vesper thrushes, that shun the presence of man, and will become silent in their musical evening if the rustling of the bushes indicates the approach of a human footstep, are more numerous in the woods of Cambridge than in any other part of the country. These are chiefly of maple, filled with underbrush, and afford the birds a harbor and a shelter, while the adjoining fields, in a state of the highest tillage, supply them plentifully with their natural food, consisting of worms and the larvæ of insects.

THE AZALEA, OR SWAMP HONEYSUCKLE.

The Azaleas are favorite flowering shrubs in florists’ collections at the present day, and are remarkable for the delicacy of their flowers and the purity of their colors. In New England are only two species,—the Swamp Honeysuckle and the colored Azalea, a prostrate shrub bearing pink flowers. It cannot be doubted that the interest attached to a flower is greatly increased by finding it in the wild wood. I have frequently observed this effect and the opposite upon suddenly meeting a garden flower in a field or wood-path, or a wild flower in the garden. When the Swamp Honeysuckle is seen growing with the fairer Azaleas of the florists in cultivated grounds, its inferiority is most painfully apparent; but when I encounter it in some green solitary dell in the forest, bending over the still waters, where all the scenes remind me only of nature, I am affected with more pleasure than by a display of the more beautiful species in a garden or greenhouse.

The Swamp Honeysuckle is one of the most interesting of the New England flowering shrubs, and a very well known species. It comes into flower about the first of July, and is recognized by its fragrance,—resembling that of the marvel of Peru,—by the similarity of its flowers to those of the woodbine, and their glutinous surface. It is found only in wet places, and delights in suspending its flowers over a gently flowing stream, the brink of a pool, or the margin of a pond, blending its odors with those of water-lilies, and borrowing a charm from the reflection of its own beauty on the surface of the still water. Though it bears no fruit, every rambler in the woods is grateful for the perfume it sheds around him while wandering in quest of its flowers. These are extremely delicate in texture and closely resemble those of the common white honeysuckle or woodbine of our gardens, not only in their general shape, but also in the appearance of several wilted flowers in the same cluster with perfect flowers and buds. A pulpy excrescence is often attached to this plant, which is familiarly known by the name of “swamp apple.” It is slightly acidulous and sweet, and, though nearly insipid, is not disagreeable in flavor.

A more beautiful but less common species, with pale crimson flowers, is found in certain localities, that tends to multiply into varieties. It is a smaller shrub than the white Azalea, and does not show the same preference for wet places. All the species are more remarkable for their flowers than their foliage, which is of a pale glaucous green and small in quantity.