XIII. Old Hickory on the Lynde Farm in Wyoming. . 201 XIV. Plane-tree, with Foliage half developed, beside a Pond on the Lynde Farm in Wyoming 225 XV. A Wood Scene, of various Species, in Waverly 243 XVI. A View of Bass River, from Frost-Fish Brook, on the old 268 XVII. Red Maples near the Glacialis in Cambridge 299 XVIII. View of Ipswich River in Middleton 332 XIX. Hemlock standing on a Hillside, near Flax Pond in West 362 XX. Black Spruce near two hundred Years old on the Chever 378 XXI. The old Lynde Homestead and Mulberry-tree in Wy oming. 401 XXII. White Pine standing on the Entrance to a Wood in Melrose 411 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. Along the level parts of New England and the adjacent country, wherever the rivers were languid in their course, and partially inundated their banks in the spring, were frequent natural meadows, not covered by trees,the homes of the robin and the bobolink before the white man had opened to them new fields for their subsistence. In the borders of these openings, the woods in early summer were filled with a sweet and novel minstrelsy, contrasting delightfully with the silence of the deeper forest. The notes of the birds were wild variations of those which were familiar to the Pilgrim in his native land, and inspired him with delight amidst the all-prevailing sadness of woods that presented on the one hand scenes both grand and beautiful, and teemed on the other with horrors which only the pioneer of the desert could describe. The whole continent, at the time of its discovery, from the coast to the Great American Desert, was one vast hunting-ground, where the nomadic inhabitants obtained their subsistence from the chase of countless herds of deer and buffalo. At this period the climate had not been modified by the operations of man upon the forest. It was less variable than now, and the temperature corresponded more definitely with the degrees of latitude. The winter was a season of more invariable cold, less interrupted by thaws. In New England and the other Northern States, snow fell in the early part of December, and lay on the ground until April, when the spring opened suddenly, and was not followed by those vicissitudes that mark the season at the present era. Such was the true forest climate. May-day came garlanded with flowers, lighted with sunshine, and breathing the odors of a true spring. It was then easy to foretell what the next season would be from its character the preceding years. Autumn was not then, as we have often seen it, extended into winter. The limits of each season were more precisely defined. The continent was annually visited by the Indian summer, that came, without fail, immediately after the fall of the leaf and the first hard frosts of November. This short season of mild and serene weather, the halcyon period of autumn, has disappeared with the primitive forest. The original circumstances of the country have been entirely revolutionized. The American climate is now in that transition state which has been caused by opening the space to the winds from all quarters by operations which have not yet been carried to their extreme limit. These changes of the surface have probably increased the mean annual temperature of the whole country by permitting the direct rays of the sun to act upon a wider area, while they have multiplied those eccentricities of climate that balk our weather calculations at all seasons. There are still in many parts of the country large tracts of wood which have not been greatly disturbed. From the observation of these, and from descriptions by different writers of the last century, we may form a pretty fair estimate of the character and aspect of the forest before it was invaded by civilized man. 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 |