Arbor-vitæ (Thuya occidentalis), the only species of Thuya in the New World. Lake St. John in Canada its northern limit; abounds between 48° 50´ and 45°. The posts last thirty-five or forty years, and the rails sixty, or three or four times as long as those of any other species. In northern New England States the best for fences; last longer in clay than sand.
The superiority of mahogany in the fineness of its grain and its hardness, which make it susceptible of a brilliant polish. Native trees in Northern States used in cabinet making are black, yellow, and canoe birches, red-flowering curled maple, bird’s-eye maple, wild cherry, and sumach.
The circle of peck and other measures made at Hingham of black, red, or gray oak are “always of a dull blue color, produced by the gallic acid of the wood acting upon the iron vessel in which it is boiled.”
White ash used for sieve rims, rake heads and handles, scythe handles, pulleys, etc. Rake teeth of the mockernut hickory.
In New York and Philadelphia “the price [of wood for fuel][168] nearly equals and sometimes exceeds that of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than 300,000 cords, and is surrounded to the distance of 300 miles by cultivated plains.” Said in book of 1819.
May 19. Found the Arum triphyllum and the nodding trillium, or wake-robin, in Conant’s Swamp. An ash also in bloom there, and the sassafras quite striking. Also the fringed polygala by Conantum wood.
Sinclair says the hornbeam is called “swamp beech” in Vermont.
May 20. Tuesday. There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human being and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind. The botanist Gray says:—
“The organs of plants are of two sorts:—1. Those of Vegetation, which are concerned in growth,—by which the plant takes in the aërial and earthy matters on which it lives, and elaborates them into the materials of its own organized substance; 2. Those of Fructification or Reproduction, which are concerned with the propagation of the species.”
So is it with the human being. I am concerned first to come to my Growth, intellectually and morally (and physically, of course, as a means to this, for the body is the symbol of the soul), and then to bear my Fruit, do my Work, propagate my kind, not only physically but morally, not only in body but in mind.