In the United States, swarms of honey bees, on leaving the parent hive, often take up their quarters in hollow trees in the neighboring woods. By the early customs of New England, the finder of a "bee tree" on the land of another owner was regarded as entitled to the honey by right of discovery; and as a necessary incident of that right, he might cut the tree, at the proper season, without asking permission of the proprietor of the soil. The quantity of "wild honey" in a tree was often large, and "bee hunting" was so profitable that it became almost a regular profession. The "bee hunter" sallied forth with a small box containing honey and a little vermilion. The bees which were attracted by the honey marked themselves with the vermilion, and hence were more readily followed in their homeward flight, and recognized when they returned a second time for booty. When loaded with spoil, this insect returns to his hive by the shortest route, and hence a straight line is popularly called in America a "bee line." By such a line, the hunter followed the bees to their sylvan hive, marked the tree with his initials, and returned to secure his prize in the autumn. When the right of the "bee hunter" was at last disputed by the land proprietors, it was with difficulty that judgments could be obtained, in inferior courts, in favor of the latter, and it was only after repeated decisions of the higher legal tribunals that the superior right of the owner of the soil was at last acquiesced in.
[281] Étude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes, p. 5.
[282] "In America," says Clavé (p. 124, 125), "where there is a vast extent of land almost without pecuniary value, but where labor is dear and the rate of interest high, it is profitable to till a large surface at the least possible cost; extensive cultivation is there the most advantageous. In England, France, and Germany, where every corner of soil is occupied, and the least bit of ground is sold at a high price, but where labor and capital are comparatively cheap, it is wisest to employ intensive cultivation. * * * All the efforts of the cultivator ought to be directed to the obtaining of a given result with the least sacrifice, and there is equally a loss to the commonwealth if the application of improved agricultural processes be neglected where they are advantageous, or if they be employed where they are not required. * * * In this point of view, sylviculture must follow the same laws as agriculture, and, like it, be modified according to the economical conditions of different states. In countries abounding in good forests, and thinly peopled, elementary and cheap methods must be pursued; in civilized regions, where a dense population requires that the soil shall be made to produce all it can yield, the regular artificial forest, with all the processes that science teaches, should be cultivated. It would be absurd to apply to the endless woods of Brazil and of Canada the method of the Spessart by "double stages," and not less so in our country, where every yard of ground has a high value, to leave to nature the task of propagating trees, and to content ourselves with cutting, every twenty or twenty-five years, the meagre growths that chance may have produced."
[283] 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 increment—twice as great as trees of the same species grown in the woods; and the American locust, Robinia pseudacacia, the wood of which is of extreme toughness and durability, is, of all trees indigenous to Northeastern America, by far the most rapid in growth.
As an illustration of the mutual interdependence of the mechanic arts, I may mention that in Italy, where stone, brick, and plaster are almost the only materials used in architecture, and where the "hollow ware" kitchen implements are of copper or of clay, the ordinary tools for working wood are of a very inferior description, and the locust timber is found too hard for their temper. Southey informs us, in "Espriella's Letters," that when a small quantity of mahogany was brought to England, early in the last century, the cabinetmakers were unable to use it, from the defective temper of their tools, until the demand for furniture from the new wood compelled them to improve the quality of their implements. In America, the cheapness of wood long made it the preferable material for almost all purposes to which it could by any possibility be applied. The mechanical cutlery and artisans' tools of the United States are of admirable temper, finish, and convenience, and no wood is too hard, or otherwise too refractory, to be wrought with great facility, both by hand tools and by the multitude of ingenious machines which the Americans have invented for this purpose.
[284] Études Forestières, p. 7.
[285] Études Forestières, p. 7.
[286] For very full catalogues of American forest trees, and remarks on their geographical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J. G. Cooper, in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and the Report of the United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division, for 1860.
[287] Although Spenser's catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of the first book of the "Faëry Queene"—the only canto of that exquisite poem actually read by most students of English literature—it is not so generally familiar as to make the quotation of it altogether superfluous:
VII.
Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand,
A shadie grove not farr away they spide,
That promist ayde the tempest to withstand;
Whose loftie trees, yelad with sommers pride,
Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide,
Not perceable with power of any starr:
And all within were pathes and alleies wide,
With footing worne, and leading inward farr;
Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entred ar.
VIII.
And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led,
Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony,
Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred,
Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky.
Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy,
The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall;
The vine-propp elm; the poplar never dry;
The builder oake, sole king of forrests all;
The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall;
IX.
The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours
And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still;
The willow, worne of forlorn paramours;
The eugh, obedient to the benders will;
The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill;
The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound;
The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;
The fruitfull olive; and the platane round;
The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound.