Part 3

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.

THE CANADIAN RHODORA.

In the latter part of May, when the early spring flowers are just beginning to fade, and when the leaves of the forest trees are sufficiently expanded to display all the tints attending the infancy of their growth, no plant attracts more admiration than the Canadian Rhodora. The flowers, of a purple crimson, are in umbels on the ends of the branches, appearing before the leaves. The corolla, consisting of long narrow petals, very deeply cleft, the stamens on slender hairy filaments, and the projecting style, resemble tufts of colored silken fringe. The Rhodora is from two to six feet in height, and is one of the most conspicuous ornaments of wet, bushy pastures in this part of the country. It is the last in the train of the delicate flowers of spring, and by its glowing hues indicates the coming of a brighter vegetation. When other shrubs of different species are only half covered with foliage, the Rhodora spreads out its flowers upon the surface of the variegated ground, in plats and clumps of irregular sizes, and sheds a checkered glow of crimson over whole acres of moor. The poets have said but little of this flower because it wants individuality. We look upon the blossoms of the Rhodora as we look upon the crimsoned clouds, admiring their general glow, not the cast of single flowers. But there is something very poetical in the rosy wreaths it affixes to the brows of Nature, still pallid with the long confinement of winter.

THE WILLOW.

The Willow is of all trees the most celebrated in romance and romantic history. Its habit of growing by the sides of lakes and rivers, and of spreading its long branches over wells in solitary pastures, has given it a peculiar significance in poetry as the accompaniment of pastoral scenes, and renders it one of the most interesting objects in landscape. Hence there is hardly a song of nature, a rustic lay of shepherds, a Latin eclogue, or any descriptive poem, that does not make frequent mention of the Willow. The piping sounds from wet places in the spring of the year, the songs of the earliest birds, and the hum of bees when they first go abroad after their winter’s rest, are all delightfully associated with this tree. We breathe the perfume of its flowers before the meadows are spangled with violets, and when the crocus has just appeared in the gardens; and its early bloom makes it a conspicuous object when it comes forth under an April sky, gleaming with a drapery of golden verdure among the still naked trees of the forest and orchard.

When Spring has closed her delicate flowers, and the multitudes that crowd around the footsteps of May have yielded their places to the brighter host of June, the Willow scatters the golden aments that adorned it, and appears in the deeper garniture of its own green foliage. The hum of insects is no longer heard among the boughs in quest of honey, but the notes of the phebe and the summer yellow-bird, that love to nestle in their spray, may be heard from their green shelter on all summer noons. The fresh and peculiar incense of the peat-meadows, with their purple beds of cranberry-vines and wild strawberries, the glistening of still waters, and the sight of little fishes that gambol in their clear depths, are circumstances that accompany the Willow, and magnify our pleasure on beholding it, either in a picture or real landscape. We prize the Willow for its material qualities no more than for its poetic relations; for it is not only the beauty of a tree, but the scenes with which it is allied, and the ideas and images it awakens in the mind, that make up its attractions.

The very name of this tree brings to mind at once a swarm of images, rural, poetical, and romantic. There is a softness in the sound of Willow that accords with the delicacy of its foliage and the flexibility of its slender branches. The syllables of this word must have been prompted by the mellow tones which are produced by the wind when gliding through its airy spray. Writers of romance have always assigned the Willow to youthful lovers, as affording the most appropriate arbor for their rustic vows, which would seem to acquire a peculiar sacredness when spoken under the shade of the most poetical of all trees.

The Willow, though tenacious of life, will not prosper in dry places. Its presence is a sure indication of water, either on the surface of the ground or a little beneath it. The grass is green at all times under this tree, and the herds that browse upon its foliage and young branches find beneath them the most grateful pasture. In the New England States it has long been customary to plant Willows by the wayside, wherever the road passes over wet grounds. Some of the most delightful retreats of the pedestrian are found under their shady boughs. When he is panting with heat and thirst, the sight of their green rows fills him with new animation, as they indicate the presence of water as well as cooling shade. The same comely rows are seen skirting the pools and watercourses of our pastoral hills and arable meadows. They are planted also by the sides of streams and canals, where they serve, by their long and numerous roots, to consolidate the banks, and by their leaves and branches afford shelter to cattle. These Willows are among the fairest ornaments of the landscape in Massachusetts just after the elm and red maple have put forth their flowers. And so lively is their appearance, with their light green foliage, that when we meet with a group of them in the turn of a road on a cloudy day, we seem to be greeted with a sudden gleam of sunshine.

The Willow is one of the few trees which have been transplanted from Europe to our own soil without being either equalled or surpassed by some American tree of kindred species. But there is no indigenous Willow in any part of the American continent that will bear comparison in size and in those general qualities which we admire in trees, either with the Weeping Willow or the common yellow Willow. The latter is as frequent in our land as any one of our native trees, except in the forest. It attains a considerable height and great dimensions, seldom forming a single trunk, but sending upward from the ground, or from a very short bole, three or four diverging branches, so as to resemble an immense shrub. This mode of growth is caused perhaps by our way of planting it,—by inserting into the ground cuttings which have no leading shoot. Indeed, all these Willows are pollards. Not one of the species is found in our forest, except where it has spread over land that has once been cleared and cultivated. In that case, we find mixed with the forest trees Willows, apple-trees, and lilacs, which were planted there before the tract was restored to nature. I have seen trees of this species growing as standards of immense size, with their branches always joining the trunk very near the ground. On this account little rustic seats and arbors are more frequently erected in the crotch of a Willow than in that of any other tree.

The most of our indigenous Willows are mere shrubs. Though there are above thirty American species, but few of them rise to the stature of trees. Some of them are creeping plants and prostrate shrubs, some are neat and elegant trees in miniature. Their branches are also of many colors, some of a fine golden hue, spreading a sort of illumination over the swamps where they abound; some are red; others with foliage so dark as to have gained the name of Mourning Willow. Some, like our common bog Willow, are called white, from their downy or silken aments. One of the most beautiful of the small species is the golden osier, or Basket Willow. The yellow twigs of this shrub, coming up from the ground like grass without subdivisions, but densely from one common root, are very ornamental to low grounds. It would seem as if Nature, who has given but little variety to the foliage of this tree had made up for its deficiency by causing the different species to display a charming variety in their size. Thus, while the common yellow Willow equals the oak in magnitude, there are many species which are miniature shrubs, not larger than a heath plant. As one of the beautiful gifts of nature, the Willow claims a large share of our admiration. Though not a convenient ornament of our enclosures, the absence of this tree from the banks of quiet streams and glassy waterfalls, overhanging rivers and shading the brink of fountains, would be most painfully felt by every lover of nature.

ROTATION AND DISTRIBUTION.

It has been observed by foresters that there is a tendency in any soil which has long been occupied by a certain kind of timber, to produce, after the trees have been felled, a very different kind, if it be left to its spontaneous action. The laws affecting such rotations have been very well ascertained, and a careful investigation of the subject would undoubtedly reveal many curious facts not yet known. If the stumps of the trees, consisting of oak, ash, maple, and some other deciduous kinds, remain after the wood is felled, they will throw up suckers, and the succeeding timber will be an inferior growth of the original wood. But if the stumps and roots of the trees should be entirely removed, it would be more difficult to determine what would be the character of the next spontaneous growth. It would probably be planted by the kinds that prevail in the neighboring forests, and it would depend on the character of the soil whether the hard or soft-wood trees would finally predominate.

There is an important chemical agency at work, that originally determines the distribution of forests, and afterwards their rotation. The hard-wood trees require more potash and a deeper soil than the coniferous and soft-wood trees. Hence they are found chiefly on alluvial plains and the lower slopes of mountains, where the soil is deep and abounds in all valuable ingredients for the support of vegetation. Pines and firs, on the contrary, though frequently discovered of an immense size on alluvial soils, are generally crowded out of such grounds by the superior vigor of the hard-wood trees; and they can only maintain their supremacy on barren and sandy levels, and the thin soils of mountain declivities, too meagre to support the growth of timber of superior kinds. But a wood must stand a great many years, several centuries perhaps, after its spontaneous restoration, before this order of nature could be fully established. We must observe the spontaneous growth and distribution of herbaceous plants in different soils to ascertain these laws, which are the same in a field as in a forest.

When any growth of hard wood has been felled and the whole removed from the ground, the soil, having been exhausted of its potash, cannot support a new and vigorous growth of the same kind of timber. The succession will consist of a meagre growth of the same species from seeds already planted there; but the white birch and poplar, especially the large American aspen, usually predominate in clearings in this part of the country. When a pine wood is felled, it is succeeded by an inferior growth of conifers, and a species of dwarf or scrub oak. Seldom, indeed, after any kind of wood has been cut down and carried away from the spot, can the exhausted soil support another that is not inferior in quality or species. Though an oak wood may be succeeded by pines, a pine wood will not be succeeded by oaks or any other hard timber, unless the trees were burned and their ashes restored to the soil. Hence we may account for the fact that poplars, white birches, and wild-cherry-trees, occupy a larger proportion of the ground that is now covered with wood than they did a century ago, in all parts of the country.

I have already alluded to the well-known fact, that the generic character of the timber, in the distribution of the primitive forest, in any country, is determined in great measure by the geological character of the soil. On sandy plains in the primitive forest, the white birch, the poplar, the aspen, and the pitch pine were abundant, as they are now on similar soils. The preference of the red maple for wet and miry soils is well known; while hard maple, oak, beech, and hickory do not prosper except in strong alluvial tracts. A heavy growth of hard timber indicates a superior soil; pine indicates an inferior one, if it has been left to the spontaneous action of nature. In the primitive forest we were sure of finding such relations of soil and species. They are not so invariable since the operations of agriculture have interrupted the true method of nature.

When a wood has been burned, the process of renewal, when left to nature, is much more tardy than if it had been felled, since it can now be restored only by a regular series of vegetable species, which must precede it, according to certain inevitable laws. The soil, however, being improved and fertilized by the ashes of the burnt timber, is in a chemical condition to support a luxuriant forest as soon as in the course of nature it can be planted there. Trees will not immediately come up from this burnt ground as in a clearing; and if they should appear, they would mostly perish from the want of protection. In the order of nature herbaceous plants are the first to occupy the soil, and these are followed by a uniform succession of different species. There is an epilobium, or willow herb, with elegant spikes of purple flowers, conspicuous in our meadows in August, which is one of the earliest occupants of burnt ground, hence called fireweed in Maine and Nova Scotia. The downy appendage to its seeds causes it to be planted there by the winds immediately after the burning. The trillium appears also in great abundance upon the blackened surface of the ground in all wet places. Plants like the ginseng, the erythronium, and the like, whose bulbs or tubers lie buried deep in the mould, escape destruction, and come up anew. These, along with several compound plants with downy seeds, and a few ferns and equisetums, are the first occupants of burnt lands.