PREFACE.
The matter contained in this volume is taken wholly from “The Woods and By-Ways of New England,” omitting all that is published in Volume I., and which has no special reference to trees. This volume, beside the particular description of species, treats of the value and beauty of trees and forests, of their climatic influence as purifiers of the atmosphere, of their relations to water, to electricity, to temperature, to the soil, to shade and salubrity, to birds and insects, to ornament, and to poetry and fable.
THE WOODS.
A YEAR AMONG THE TREES;
OR,
THE WOODS AND BY-WAYS OF NEW ENGLAND.
THE PRIMITIVE FOREST.
When the Pilgrim first landed on the coast of America, the most remarkable feature of its scenery that drew his attention, next to the absence of towns and villages, was an almost universal forest. A few openings were to be seen near the rivers,—immense peat-meadows covered with wild bushes and gramineous plants, interspersed with little wooded islets, and bordered on all sides by a rugged, silent, and dreary desert of woods. Partial clearings had likewise been made by the Indians for their rude hamlets, and some spaces had been opened by fire. But the greater part of the country was darkened by an umbrageous mass of trees and shrubbery, in whose gloomy shades were ever present dangers and bewilderment for the traveller. In these solitudes the axe of the woodman had never been heard, and the forest for thousands of years had been subject only to the spontaneous action of natural causes. To men who had been accustomed to the open and cultivated plains of Europe, this waste of woods, those hills without prospect, that pathless wilderness, and its inhabitants as savage as the aspect of the country, must have seemed equally sublime and terrible.
But when the colonists had cut roads through this desert, planted landmarks over the country, built houses upon its clearings, opened the hill-tops to a view of the surrounding prospect, and cheered the solitude by some gleams of civilization, then came the naturalist and the man of science to survey the aspect and productions of this new world. And when they made their first excursions over its rugged hills and through its wooded vales, we can easily imagine their transports at the sight of its peculiar scenery. How must the early botanist have exulted over this grand assemblage of plants, that bore resemblance to those of Europe only as the wild Indian resembles the fair-haired Saxon! Everywhere some rare herb put forth flowers at his feet, and trees of magnificent height and slender proportions intercepted his progress by their crowded numbers. The wood was so generally uninterrupted, that it was difficult to find a summit from which he could obtain a lookout of any considerable extent; but occasional natural openings exposed floral scenes that must have seemed like the work of enchantment. In the wet meadows were deep beds of moss of the finest verdure, which had seldom been disturbed by man or brute. On the uplands were vast fields of the checkerberry plant, social, like the European heath, and loaded half the year with its spicy scarlet fruit. Every valley presented some unknown vegetation to his sight, and every tangled path led him into a new scene of beauties and wonders. It must have seemed to him, when traversing this strange wilderness, that he had entered upon a new earth, in which nature had imitated, without repeating, the productions of his native East.