No More Learning

We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter
morning. The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill;
the broadened sash and frosted panes admit a dim and private light,
which enhances the snug cheer within. The stillness of the morning is
impressive. The floor creaks under our feet as we move toward the
window to look abroad through some clear space over the fields. We
see the roofs stand under their snow burden. From the eaves and fences
hang stalactites of snow, and in the yard stand stalagmites covering
some concealed core. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky
on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see fantastic forms
stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature
had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for
man's art.

Silently we unlatch the door, letting the drift fall in, and step
abroad to face the cutting air. Already the stars have lost some of
their sparkle, and a dull, leaden mist skirts the horizon. A lurid
brazen light in the east proclaims the approach of day, while the
western landscape is dim and spectral still, and clothed in a sombre
Tartarean light, like the shadowy realms. They are Infernal sounds
only that you hear,--the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, the
chopping of wood, the lowing of kine, all seem to come from Pluto's
barnyard and beyond the Styx,--not for any melancholy they suggest,
but their twilight bustle is too solemn and mysterious for earth. The
recent tracks of the fox or otter, in the yard, remind us that each
hour of the night is crowded with events, and the primeval nature is
still working and making tracks in the snow. Opening the gate, we
tread briskly along the lone country road, crunching the dry and
crisped snow under our feet, or aroused by the sharp, clear creak of
the wood-sled, just starting for the distant market, from the early
farmer's door, where it has lain the summer long, dreaming amid the
chips and stubble; while far through the drifts and powdered windows
we see the farmer's early candle, like a paled star, emitting a lonely
beam, as if some severe virtue were at its matins there. And one by
one the smokes begin to ascend from the chimneys amid the trees and
snows.

The sluggish smoke curls up from some deep dell,
The stiffened air exploring in the dawn,
And making slow acquaintance with the day
Delaying now upon its heavenward course,
In wreathed loiterings dallying with itself,
With as uncertain purpose and slow deed
As its half-wakened master by the hearth,
Whose mind still slumbering and sluggish thoughts
Have not yet swept into the onward current
Of the new day;--and now it streams afar,
The while the chopper goes with step direct,
And mind intent to swing the early axe.
First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad
His early scout, his emissary, smoke,
The earliest, latest pilgrim from the roof,
To feel the frosty air, inform the day;
And while he crouches still beside the hearth,
Nor musters courage to unbar the door,
It has gone down the glen with the light wind,
And o'er the plain unfurled its venturous wreath,
Draped the tree-tops, loitered upon the hill,
And warmed the pinions of the early bird;
And now, perchance, high in the crispy air,
Has caught sight of the day o'er the earth's edge,
And greets its master's eye at his low door,
As some refulgent cloud in the upper sky.

We hear the sound of wood-chopping at the farmers' doors, far over the
frozen earth, the baying of the house-dog, and the distant clarion of
the cock,--though the thin and frosty air conveys only the finer
particles of sound to our ears, with short and sweet vibrations, as
the waves subside soonest on the purest and lightest liquids, in which
gross substances sink to the bottom. They come clear and bell-like,
and from a greater distance in the horizon, as if there were fewer
impediments than in summer to make them faint and ragged. The ground
is sonorous, like seasoned wood, and even the ordinary rural sounds
are melodious, and the jingling of the ice on the trees is sweet and
liquid. There is the least possible moisture in the atmosphere, all
being dried up or congealed, and it is of such extreme tenuity and
elasticity that it becomes a source of delight. The withdrawn and
tense sky seems groined like the aisles of a cathedral, and the
polished air sparkles as if there were crystals of ice floating in it.
As they who have resided in Greenland tell us that when it freezes
"the sea smokes like burning turf-land, and a fog or mist arises,
called frost-smoke," which "cutting smoke frequently raises blisters
on the face and hands, and is very pernicious to the health. " But this
pure, stinging cold is an elixir to the lungs, and not so much a
frozen mist as a crystallized midsummer haze, refined and purified by
cold.

The sun at length rises through the distant woods, as if with the
faint clashing, swinging sound of cymbals, melting the air with his
beams, and with such rapid steps the morning travels, that already his
rays are gilding the distant western mountains. Meanwhile we step
hastily along through the powdery snow, warmed by an inward heat,
enjoying an Indian summer still, in the increased glow of thought and
feeling. Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we
should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but
find her our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds.
If our bodies were fed with pure and simple elements, and not with a
stimulating and heating diet, they would afford no more pasture for
cold than a leafless twig, but thrive like the trees, which find even
winter genial to their expansion.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.
Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves
of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow. In the bare fields
and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and
bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. A
cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can
withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we
meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we
respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All
things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out
must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor
as God himself. It is invigorating to breathe the cleansed air. Its
greater fineness and purity are visible to the eye, and we would fain
stay out long and late, that the gales may sigh through us, too, as
through the leafless trees, and fit us for the winter,--as if we hoped
so to borrow some pure and steadfast virtue, which will stead us in
all seasons.

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes
out, and which no cold can chill. It finally melts the great snow,
and in January or July is only buried under a thicker or thinner
covering. In the coldest day it flows somewhere, and the snow melts
around every tree. This field of winter rye, which sprouted late in
the fall, and now speedily dissolves the snow, is where the fire is
very thinly covered. We feel warmed by it. In the winter, warmth
stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling rill,
with its bare stones shining in the sun, and to warm springs in the
woods, with as much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The steam which
rises from swamps and pools is as dear and domestic as that of our own
kettle. What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day,
when the meadow mice come out by the wall-sides, and the chickadee
lisps in the defiles of the wood? The warmth comes directly from the
sun, and is not radiated from the earth, as in summer; and when we
feel his beams on our backs as we are treading some snowy dell, we are
grateful as for a special kindness, and bless the sun which has
followed us into that by-place.

This subterranean fire has its altar in each man's breast; for in the
coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveler cherishes a warmer
fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A
healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter,
summer is in his heart. There is the south. Thither have all birds and
insects migrated, and around the warm springs in his breast are
gathered the robin and the lark.

At length, having reached the edge of the woods, and shut out the
gadding town, we enter within their covert as we go under the roof of
a cottage, and cross its threshold, all ceiled and banked up with
snow. They are glad and warm still, and as genial and cheery in winter
as in summer. As we stand in the midst of the pines in the flickering
and checkered light which straggles but little way into their maze, we
wonder if the towns have ever heard their simple story. It seems to us
that no traveler has ever explored them, and notwithstanding the
wonders which science is elsewhere revealing every day, who would not
like to hear their annals? Our humble villages in the plain are their
contribution. We borrow from the forest the boards which shelter and
the sticks which warm us. How important is their evergreen to the
winter, that portion of the summer which does not fade, the permanent
year, the unwithered grass! Thus simply, and with little expense of
altitude, is the surface of the earth diversified. What would human
life be without forests, those natural cities? From the tops of
mountains they appear like smooth-shaven lawns, yet whither shall we
walk but in this taller grass?

In this glade covered with bushes of a year's growth, see how the
silvery dust lies on every seared leaf and twig, deposited in such
infinite and luxurious forms as by their very variety atone for the
absence of color. Observe the tiny tracks of mice around every stem,
and the triangular tracks of the rabbit. A pure elastic heaven hangs
over all, as if the impurities of the summer sky, refined and shrunk
by the chaste winter's cold, had been winnowed from the heavens upon
the earth.

Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens
seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and
distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a
Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.

How much more living is the life that is in nature, the furred life
which still survives the stinging nights, and, from amidst fields and
woods covered with frost and snow, sees the sun rise!

"The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. "

The gray squirrel and rabbit are brisk and playful in the remote
glens, even on the morning of the cold Friday. Here is our Lapland and
Labrador, and for our Esquimaux and Knistenaux, Dog-ribbed Indians,
Novazemblaites, and Spitzbergeners, are there not the ice-cutter and
woodchopper, the fox, muskrat, and mink?

Still, in the midst of the arctic day, we may trace the summer to its
retreats, and sympathize with some contemporary life. Stretched over
the brooks, in the midst of the frost-bound meadows, we may observe
the submarine cottages of the caddis-worms, the larvae of the
Plicipennes; their small cylindrical cases built around themselves,
composed of flags, sticks, grass, and withered leaves, shells, and
pebbles, in form and color like the wrecks which strew the
bottom,--now drifting along over the pebbly bottom, now whirling in
tiny eddies and dashing down steep falls, or sweeping rapidly along
with the current, or else swaying to and fro at the end of some
grass-blade or root. Anon they will leave their sunken habitations,
and, crawling up the stems of plants, or to the surface, like gnats,
as perfect insects henceforth, flutter over the surface of the water,
or sacrifice their short lives in the flame of our candles at evening.
Down yonder little glen the shrubs are drooping under their burden,
and the red alderberries contrast with the white ground. Here are the
marks of a myriad feet which have already been abroad. The sun rises
as proudly over such a glen as over the valley of the Seine or the
Tiber, and it seems the residence of a pure and self-subsistent valor,
such as they never witnessed,--which never knew defeat nor fear. Here
reign the simplicity and purity of a primitive age, and a health and
hope far remote from towns and cities. Standing quite alone, far in
the forest, while the wind is shaking down snow from the trees, and
leaving the only human tracks behind us, we find our reflections of a
richer variety than the life of cities. The chickadee and nuthatch are
more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall
return to these last as to more vulgar companions. In this lonely
glen, with its brook draining the slopes, its creased ice and crystals
of all hues, where the spruces and hemlocks stand up on either side,
and the rush and sere wild oats in the rivulet itself, our lives are
more serene and worthy to contemplate.

As the day advances, the heat of the sun is reflected by the
hillsides, and we hear a faint but sweet music, where flows the rill
released from its fetters, and the icicles are melting on the trees;
and the nuthatch and partridge are heard and seen. The south wind
melts the snow at noon, and the bare ground appears with its withered
grass and leaves, and we are invigorated by the perfume which exhales
from it, as by the scent of strong meats.

Let us go into this deserted woodman's hut, and see how he has passed
the long winter nights and the short and stormy days. For here man has
lived under this south hillside, and it seems a civilized and public
spot. We have such associations as when the traveler stands by the
ruins of Palmyra or Hecatompolis. Singing birds and flowers perchance
have begun to appear here, for flowers as well as weeds follow in the
footsteps of man. These hemlocks whispered over his head, these
hickory logs were his fuel, and these pitch pine roots kindled his
fire; yonder fuming rill in the hollow, whose thin and airy vapor
still ascends as busily as ever, though he is far off now, was his
well. These hemlock boughs, and the straw upon this raised platform,
were his bed, and this broken dish held his drink. But he has not been
here this season, for the phoebes built their nest upon this shelf
last summer. I find some embers left as if he had but just gone out,
where he baked his pot of beans; and while at evening he smoked his
pipe, whose stemless bowl lies in the ashes, chatted with his only
companion, if perchance he had any, about the depth of the snow on the
morrow, already falling fast and thick without, or disputed whether
the last sound was the screech of an owl, or the creak of a bough, or
imagination only; and through his broad chimney-throat, in the late
winter evening, ere he stretched himself upon the straw, he looked up
to learn the progress of the storm, and, seeing the bright stars of
Cassiopeia's Chair shining brightly down upon him, fell contentedly
asleep.

See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper's history!
From this stump we may guess the sharpness of his axe, and from the
slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, and whether he cut down
the tree without going round it or changing hands; and, from the
flexure of the splinters, we may know which way it fell. This one chip
contains inscribed on it the whole history of the woodchopper and of
the world. On this scrap of paper, which held his sugar or salt,
perchance, or was the wadding of his gun, sitting on a log in the
forest, with what interest we read the tattle of cities, of those
larger huts, empty and to let, like this, in High Streets and
Broadways. The eaves are dripping on the south side of this simple
roof, while the titmouse lisps in the pine and the genial warmth of
the sun around the door is somewhat kind and human.

After two seasons, this rude dwelling does not deform the scene.
Already the birds resort to it, to build their nests, and you may
track to its door the feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a long time,
nature overlooks the encroachment and profanity of man. The wood still
cheerfully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that fells
it, and while they are few and seldom, they enhance its wildness, and
all the elements strive to naturalize the sound.

Now our path begins to ascend gradually to the top of this high hill,
from whose precipitous south side we can look over the broad country
of forest and field and river, to the distant snowy mountains. See
yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some
invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead.
There must be a warmer and more genial spot there below, as where we
detect the vapor from a spring forming a cloud above the trees. What
fine relations are established between the traveler who discovers this
airy column from some eminence in the forest and him who sits below!
Up goes the smoke as silently and naturally as the vapor exhales from
the leaves, and as busy disposing itself in wreaths as the housewife
on the hearth below. It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests
more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. Where
its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human
life has planted itself,--and such is the beginning of Rome, the
establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on
the prairies of America or the steppes of Asia.

And now we descend again, to the brink of this woodland lake, which
lies in a hollow of the hills, as if it were their expressed juice,
and that of the leaves which are annually steeped in it. Without
outlet or inlet to the eye, it has still its history, in the lapse of
its waves, in the rounded pebbles on its shore, and in the pines which
grow down to its brink. It has not been idle, though sedentary, but,
like Abu Musa, teaches that "sitting still at home is the heavenly
way; the going out is the way of the world. " Yet in its evaporation it
travels as far as any. In summer it is the earth's liquid eye, a
mirror in the breast of nature. The sins of the wood are washed out
in it. See how the woods form an amphitheatre about it, and it is an
arena for all the genialness of nature. All trees direct the traveler
to its brink, all paths seek it out, birds fly to it, quadrupeds flee
to it, and the very ground inclines toward it. It is nature's saloon,
where she has sat down to her toilet. Consider her silent economy and
tidiness; how the sun comes with his evaporation to sweep the dust
from its surface each morning, and a fresh surface is constantly
welling up; and annually, after whatever impurities have accumulated
herein, its liquid transparency appears again in the spring. In summer
a hushed music seems to sweep across its surface. But now a plain
sheet of snow conceals it from our eyes, except where the wind has
swept the ice bare, and the sere leaves are gliding from side to side,
tacking and veering on their tiny voyages. Here is one just keeled up
against a pebble on shore, a dry beech leaf, rocking still, as if it
would start again. A skillful engineer, methinks, might project its
course since it fell from the parent stem. Here are all the elements
for such a calculation. Its present position, the direction of the
wind, the level of the pond, and how much more is given. In its
scarred edges and veins is its log rolled up.

We fancy ourselves in the interior of a larger house. The surface of
the pond is our deal table or sanded floor, and the woods rise
abruptly from its edge, like the walls of a cottage. The lines set to
catch pickerel through the ice look like a larger culinary
preparation, and the men stand about on the white ground like pieces
of forest furniture. The actions of these men, at the distance of
half a mile over the ice and snow, impress us as when we read the
exploits of Alexander in history. They seem not unworthy of the
scenery, and as momentous as the conquest of kingdoms.

Again we have wandered through the arches of the wood, until from its
skirts we hear the distant booming of ice from yonder bay of the
river, as if it were moved by some other and subtler tide than oceans
know. To me it has a strange sound of home, thrilling as the voice of
one's distant and noble kindred. A mild summer sun shines over forest
and lake, and though there is but one green leaf for many rods, yet
nature enjoys a serene health. Every sound is fraught with the same
mysterious assurance of health, as well now the creaking of the boughs
in January, as the soft sough of the wind in July.

When Winter fringes every bough
With his fantastic wreath,
And puts the seal of silence now
Upon the leaves beneath;

When every stream in its penthouse
Goes gurgling on its way,
And in his gallery the mouse
Nibbleth the meadow hay;

Methinks the summer still is nigh,
And lurketh underneath,
As that same meadow mouse doth lie
Snug in that last year's heath.

And if perchance the chickadee
Lisp a faint note anon,
The snow is summer's canopy,
Which she herself put on.

Fair blossoms deck the cheerful trees,
And dazzling fruits depend;
The north wind sighs a summer breeze,
The nipping frosts to fend,

Bringing glad tidings unto me,
The while I stand all ear,
Of a serene eternity,
Which need not winter fear.

Out on the silent pond straightway
The restless ice doth crack,
And pond sprites merry gambols play
Amid the deafening rack.

Eager I hasten to the vale,
As if I heard brave news,
How nature held high festival,
Which it were hard to lose.

I gambol with my neighbor ice,
And sympathizing quake,
As each new crack darts in a trice
Across the gladsome lake.

One with the cricket in the ground,
And fagot on the hearth,
Resounds the rare domestic sound
Along the forest path.

Before night we will take a journey on skates along the course of this
meandering river, as full of novelty to one who sits by the cottage
fire all the winter's day, as if it were over the polar ice, with
Captain Parry or Franklin; following the winding of the stream, now
flowing amid hills, now spreading out into fair meadows, and forming a
myriad coves and bays where the pine and hemlock overarch. The river
flows in the rear of the towns, and we see all things from a new and
wilder side. The fields and gardens come down to it with a frankness,
and freedom from pretension, which they do not wear on the highway. It
is the outside and edge of the earth. Our eyes are not offended by
violent contrasts. The last rail of the farmer's fence is some swaying
willow bough, which still preserves its freshness, and here at length
all fences stop, and we no longer cross any road. We may go far up
within the country now by the most retired and level road, never
climbing a hill, but by broad levels ascending to the upland meadows.
It is a beautiful illustration of the law of obedience, the flow of a
river; the path for a sick man, a highway down which an acorn cup may
float secure with its freight. Its slight occasional falls, whose
precipices would not diversify the landscape, are celebrated by mist
and spray, and attract the traveler from far and near. From the remote
interior, its current conducts him by broad and easy steps, or by one
gentler inclined plane, to the sea. Thus by an early and constant
yielding to the inequalities of the ground it secures itself the
easiest passage.

No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times, and now we
draw near to the empire of the fishes. Our feet glide swiftly over
unfathomed depths, where in summer our line tempted the pout and
perch, and where the stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors
formed by the bulrushes. The deep, impenetrable marsh, where the heron
waded and bittern squatted, is made pervious to our swift shoes, as if
a thousand railroads had been made into it. With one impulse we are
carried to the cabin of the muskrat, that earliest settler, and see
him dart away under the transparent ice, like a furred fish, to his
hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over meadows where lately "the
mower whet his scythe," through beds of frozen cranberries mixed with
meadow-grass. We skate near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the
kingbird hung their nests over the water, and the hornets builded from
the maple in the swamp. How many gay warblers, following the sun, have
radiated from this nest of silver birch and thistle-down! On the
swamp's outer edge was hung the supermarine village, where no foot
penetrated. In this hollow tree the wood duck reared her brood, and
slid away each day to forage in yonder fen.

In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried
specimens, in their natural order and position. The meadows and
forests are a _hortus siccus_. The leaves and grasses stand perfectly
pressed by the air without screw or gum, and the birds' nests are not
hung on an artificial twig, but where they builded them. We go about
dry-shod to inspect the summer's work in the rank swamp, and see what
a growth have got the alders, the willows, and the maples; testifying
to how many warm suns, and fertilizing dews and showers. See what
strides their boughs took in the luxuriant summer,--and anon these
dormant buds will carry them onward and upward another span into the
heavens.

Occasionally we wade through fields of snow, under whose depths the
river is lost for many rods, to appear again to the right or left,
where we least expected; still holding on its way underneath, with a
faint, stertorous, rumbling sound, as if, like the bear and marmot,
it too had hibernated, and we had followed its faint summer trail to
where it earthed itself in snow and ice. At first we should have
thought that rivers would be empty and dry in midwinter, or else
frozen solid till the spring thawed them; but their volume is not
diminished even, for only a superficial cold bridges their surfaces.
The thousand springs which feed the lakes and streams are flowing
still. The issues of a few surface springs only are closed, and they
go to swell the deep reservoirs. Nature's wells are below the frost.
The summer brooks are not filled with snow-water, nor does the mower
quench his thirst with that alone. The streams are swollen when the
snow melts in the spring, because nature's work has been delayed, the
water being turned into ice and snow, whose particles are less smooth
and round, and do not find their level so soon.

Far over the ice, between the hemlock woods and snow-clad hills,
stands the pickerel-fisher, his lines set in some retired cove, like a
Finlander, with his arms thrust into the pouches of his dreadnaught;
with dull, snowy, fishy thoughts, himself a finless fish, separated a
few inches from his race; dumb, erect, and made to be enveloped in
clouds and snows, like the pines on shore. In these wild scenes, men
stand about in the scenery, or move deliberately and heavily, having
sacrificed the sprightliness and vivacity of towns to the dumb
sobriety of nature. He does not make the scenery less wild, more than
the jays and muskrats, but stands there as a part of it, as the
natives are represented in the voyages of early navigators, at Nootka
Sound, and on the Northwest coast, with their furs about them, before
they were tempted to loquacity by a scrap of iron. He belongs to the
natural family of man, and is planted deeper in nature and has more
root than the inhabitants of towns. Go to him, ask what luck, and you
will learn that he too is a worshiper of the unseen. Hear with what
sincere deference and waving gesture in his tone he speaks of the lake
pickerel, which he has never seen, his primitive and ideal race of
pickerel. He is connected with the shore still, as by a fish-line, and
yet remembers the season when he took fish through the ice on the
pond, while the peas were up in his garden at home.

But now, while we have loitered, the clouds have gathered again, and a
few straggling snowflakes are beginning to descend. Faster and faster
they fall, shutting out the distant objects from sight. The snow falls
on every wood and field, and no crevice is forgotten; by the river and
the pond, on the hill and in the valley. Quadrupeds are confined to
their coverts and the birds sit upon their perches this peaceful hour.
There is not so much sound as in fair weather, but silently and
gradually every slope, and the gray walls and fences, and the polished
ice, and the sere leaves, which were not buried before, are concealed,
and the tracks of men and beasts are lost. With so little effort does
nature reassert her rule and blot out the traces of men. Hear how
Homer has described the same: "The snowflakes fall thick and fast on a
winter's day. The winds are lulled, and the snow falls incessant,
covering the tops of the mountains, and the hills, and the plains
where the lotus-tree grows, and the cultivated fields, and they are
falling by the inlets and shores of the foaming sea, but are silently
dissolved by the waves. " The snow levels all things, and infolds them
deeper in the bosom of nature, as, in the slow summer, vegetation
creeps up to the entablature of the temple, and the turrets of the
castle, and helps her to prevail over art.

The surly night-wind rustles through the wood, and warns us to retrace
our steps, while the sun goes down behind the thickening storm, and
birds seek their roosts, and cattle their stalls.

"Drooping the lab'rer ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and _now_ demands
The fruit of all his toil. "

Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the
wind and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of
him as a merry woodchopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as
summer. The unexplored grandeur of the storm keeps up the spirits of
the traveler. It does not trifle with us, but has a sweet earnestness.
In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery,
like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half
concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The
imprisoning drifts increase the sense of comfort which the house
affords, and in the coldest days we are content to sit over the hearth
and see the sky through the chimney-top, enjoying the quiet and serene
life that may be had in a warm corner by the chimney-side, or feeling
our pulse by listening to the low of cattle in the street, or the
sound of the flail in distant barns all the long afternoon. No doubt a
skillful physician could determine our health by observing how these
simple and natural sounds affected us. We enjoy now, not an Oriental,
but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the
shadow of motes in the sunbeams.

Sometimes our fate grows too homely and familiarly serious ever to be
cruel. Consider how for three months the human destiny is wrapped in
furs. The good Hebrew Revelation takes no cognizance of all this
cheerful snow.
Is there no religion for the temperate and frigid
zones? We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the
gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been
sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all,
records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let
a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador,
and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and
experience, from the setting in of winter to the breaking up of the
ice.

Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer's hearth, when
the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by
nature and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is
the happy resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and
thinks of his preparedness for winter, and, through the glittering
panes, sees with equanimity "the mansion of the northern bear," for
now the storm is over,--

"The full ethereal round,
Infinite worlds disclosing to the view,
Shines out intensely keen; and all one cope
Of starry glitter glows from pole to pole. "




THE SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES[6]


Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a
transcendentalist; and for my part I am more interested in the men
than in the cattle. I wish to see once more those old familiar faces,
whose names I do not know, which for me represent the Middlesex
country, and come as near being indigenous to the soil as a white man
can; the men who are not above their business, whose coats are not too
black, whose shoes do not shine very much, who never wear gloves to
conceal their hands. It is true, there are some queer specimens of
humanity attracted to our festival, but all are welcome. I am pretty
sure to meet once more that weak-minded and whimsical fellow,
generally weak-bodied too, who prefers a crooked stick for a cane;
perfectly useless, you would say, only _bizarre_, fit for a cabinet,
like a petrified snake. A ram's horn would be as convenient, and is
yet more curiously twisted. He brings that much indulged bit of the
country with him, from some town's end or other, and introduces it to
Concord groves, as if he had promised it so much sometime. So some, it
seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think
that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best
ruler. Or why choose a man to do plain work who is distinguished for
his oddity? However, I do not know but you will think that they have
committed this mistake who invited me to speak to you to-day.

In my capacity of surveyor, I have often talked with some of you, my
employers, at your dinner-tables, after having gone round and round
and behind your farming, and ascertained exactly what its limits were.
Moreover, taking a surveyor's and a naturalist's liberty, I have been
in the habit of going across your lots much oftener than is usual, as
many of you, perhaps to your sorrow, are aware. Yet many of you, to my
relief, have seemed not to be aware of it; and, when I came across you
in some out-of-the-way nook of your farms, have inquired, with an air
of surprise, if I were not lost, since you had never seen me in that
part of the town or county before; when, if the truth were known, and
it had not been for betraying my secret, I might with more propriety
have inquired if _you_ were not lost, since I had never seen _you_
there before. I have several times shown the proprietor the shortest
way out of his wood-lot.

Therefore, it would seem that I have some title to speak to you
to-day; and considering what that title is, and the occasion that has
called us together, I need offer no apology if I invite your
attention, for the few moments that are allotted me, to a purely
scientific subject.

At those dinner-tables referred to, I have often been asked, as many
of you have been, if I could tell how it happened, that when a pine
wood was cut down an oak one commonly sprang up, and _vice versa_. To
which I have answered, and now answer, that I can tell,--that it is no
mystery to me. As I am not aware that this has been clearly shown by
any one, I shall lay the more stress on this point. Let me lead you
back into your wood-lots again.

When, hereabouts, a single forest tree or a forest springs up
naturally where none of its kind grew before, I do not hesitate to
say, though in some quarters still it may sound paradoxical, that it
came from a seed. Of the various ways by which trees are _known_ to be
propagated,--by transplanting, cuttings, and the like,--this is the
only supposable one under these circumstances. No such tree has ever
been known to spring from anything else. If any one asserts that it
sprang from something else, or from nothing, the burden of proof lies
with him.

It remains, then, only to show how the seed is transported from where
it grows to where it is planted. This is done chiefly by the agency of
the wind, water, and animals. The lighter seeds, as those of pines and
maples, are transported chiefly by wind and water; the heavier, as
acorns and nuts, by animals.

In all the pines, a very thin membrane, in appearance much like an
insect's wing, grows over and around the seed, and independent of it,
while the latter is being developed within its base. Indeed this is
often perfectly developed, though the seed is abortive; nature being,
you would say, more sure to provide the means of transporting the
seed, than to provide the seed to be transported. In other words, a
beautiful thin sack is woven around the seed, with a handle to it such
as the wind can take hold of, and it is then committed to the wind,
expressly that it may transport the seed and extend the range of the
species; and this it does, as effectually as when seeds are sent by
mail in a different kind of sack from the Patent Office. There is a
patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose
managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody
at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more
extensive and regular.

There is, then, no necessity for supposing that the pines have sprung
up from nothing, and I am aware that I am not at all peculiar in
asserting that they come from seeds, though the mode of their
propagation _by nature_ has been but little attended to. They are very
extensively raised from the seed in Europe, and are beginning to be
here.

When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will not _at once_ spring
up there unless there are, or have been quite recently, seed-bearing
pines near enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent
to a forest of pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there,
you will surely have an extension of your pine forest, provided the
soil is suitable.

As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings,
the notion is still a very common one that, when the trees which bear
these spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they
have come from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there
in an unusual manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for
centuries, or perhaps been called into activity by the heat of a
burning. I do not believe these assertions, and I will state some of
the ways in which, according to my observation, such forests are
planted and raised.

Every one of these seeds, too, will be found to be winged or legged in
another fashion. Surely it is not wonderful that cherry trees of all
kinds are widely dispersed, since their fruit is well known to be the
favorite food of various birds. Many kinds are called bird cherries,
and they appropriate many more kinds, which are not so called. Eating
cherries is a bird-like employment, and unless we disperse the seeds
occasionally, as they do, I shall think that the birds have the best
right to them. See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in
order that a bird may be compelled to transport it,--in the very midst
of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that would devour this
must commonly take the stone also into its mouth or bill. If you ever
ate a cherry, and did not make two bites of it, you must have
perceived it,--right in the centre of the luscious morsel, a large
earthy residuum left on the tongue. We thus take into our mouths
cherry-stones as big as peas, a dozen at once, for Nature can persuade
us to do almost anything when she would compass her ends. Some wild
men and children instinctively swallow these, as the birds do when in
a hurry, it being the shortest way to get rid of them. Thus, though
these seeds are not provided with vegetable wings, Nature has impelled
the thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly away with them;
and they are winged in another sense, and more effectually than the
seeds of pines, for these are carried even against the wind. The
consequence is, that cherry trees grow not only here but there. The
same is true of a great many other seeds.

But to come to the observation which suggested these remarks. As I
have said, I suspect that I can throw some light on the fact that when
hereabouts a dense pine wood is cut down, oaks and other hard woods
may at once take its place. I have got only to show that the acorns
and nuts, provided they are grown in the neighborhood, are regularly
planted in such woods; for I assert that if an oak tree has not grown
within ten miles, and man has not carried acorns thither, then an oak
wood will not spring up _at once_, when a pine wood is cut down.

Apparently, there were only pines there before. They are cut off, and
after a year or two you see oaks and other hard woods springing up
there, with scarcely a pine amid them, and the wonder commonly is, how
the seed could have lain in the ground so long without decaying. But
the truth is, that it has not lain in the ground so long, but is
regularly planted each year by various quadrupeds and birds.

In this neighborhood, where oaks and pines are about equally
dispersed, if you look through the thickest pine wood, even the
seemingly unmixed pitch pine ones, you will commonly detect many
little oaks, birches, and other hard woods, sprung from seeds carried
into the thicket by squirrels and other animals, and also blown
thither, but which are overshadowed and choked by the pines. The
denser the evergreen wood, the more likely it is to be well planted
with these seeds, because the planters incline to resort with their
forage to the closest covert. They also carry it into birch and other
woods. This planting is carried on annually, and the oldest seedlings
annually die; but when the pines are cleared off, the oaks, having got
just the start they want, and now secured favorable conditions,
immediately spring up to trees.

The shade of a dense pine wood is more unfavorable to the springing up
of pines of the same species than of oaks within it, though the former
may come up abundantly when the pines are cut, if there chance to be
sound seed in the ground.

But when you cut off a lot of hard wood, very often the little pines
mixed with it have a similar start, for the squirrels have carried off
the nuts to the pines, and not to the more open wood, and they
commonly make pretty clean work of it; and moreover, if the wood was
old, the sprouts will be feeble or entirely fail; to say nothing about
the soil being, in a measure, exhausted for this kind of crop.

If a pine wood is surrounded by a white oak one chiefly, white oaks
may be expected to succeed when the pines are cut. If it is surrounded
instead by an edging of shrub oaks, then you will probably have a
dense shrub oak thicket.

I have no time to go into details, but will say, in a word, that while
the wind is conveying the seeds of pines into hard woods and open
lands, the squirrels and other animals are conveying the seeds of oaks
and walnuts into the pine woods, and thus a rotation of crops is kept
up.

I affirmed this confidently many years ago, and an occasional
examination of dense pine woods confirmed me in my opinion. It has
long been known to observers that squirrels bury nuts in the ground,
but I am not aware that any one has thus accounted for the regular
succession of forests.

On the 24th of September, in 1857, as I was paddling down the Assabet,
in this town, I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under some
herbage, with something large in its mouth. It stopped near the foot
of a hemlock, within a couple of rods of me, and, hastily pawing a
hole with its fore feet, dropped its booty into it, covered it up, and
retreated part way up the trunk of the tree. As I approached the shore
to examine the deposit, the squirrel, descending part way, betrayed no
little anxiety about its treasure, and made two or three motions to
recover it before it finally retreated. Digging there, I found two
green pignuts joined together, with the thick husks on, buried about
an inch and a half under the reddish soil of decayed hemlock
leaves,--just the right depth to plant it. In short, this squirrel was
then engaged in accomplishing two objects, to wit, laying up a store
of winter food for itself, and planting a hickory wood for all
creation. If the squirrel was killed, or neglected its deposit, a
hickory would spring up. The nearest hickory tree was twenty rods
distant. These nuts were there still just fourteen days later, but
were gone when I looked again, November 21st, or six weeks later
still.

I have since examined more carefully several dense woods, which are
said to be, and are apparently, exclusively pine, and always with the
same result. For instance, I walked the same day to a small but very
dense and handsome white pine grove, about fifteen rods square, in the
east part of this town. The trees are large for Concord, being from
ten to twenty inches in diameter, and as exclusively pine as any wood
that I know. Indeed, I selected this wood because I thought it the
least likely to contain anything else. It stands on an open plain or
pasture, except that it adjoins another small pine wood, which has a
few little oaks in it, on the southeast side. On every other side, it
was at least thirty rods from the nearest woods. Standing on the edge
of this grove and looking through it, for it is quite level and free
from underwood, for the most part bare, red-carpeted ground, you would
have said that there was not a hardwood tree in it, young or old. But
on looking carefully along over its floor I discovered, though it was
not till my eye had got used to the search, that, alternating with
thin ferns, and small blueberry bushes, there was, not merely here and
there, but as often as every five feet and with a degree of
regularity, a little oak, from three to twelve inches high, and in one
place I found a green acorn dropped by the base of a pine.

I confess I was surprised to find my theory so perfectly proved in
this case. One of the principal agents in this planting, the red
squirrels, were all the while curiously inspecting me, while I was
inspecting their plantation. Some of the little oaks had been browsed
by cows, which resorted to this wood for shade.

After seven or eight years, the hard woods evidently find such a
locality unfavorable to their growth, the pines being allowed to
stand. As an evidence of this, I observed a diseased red maple
twenty-five feet long, which had been recently prostrated, though it
was still covered with green leaves, the only maple in any position in
the wood.

But although these oaks almost invariably die if the pines are not cut
down, it is probable that they do better for a few years under their
shelter than they would anywhere else.

The very extensive and thorough experiments of the English have at
length led them to adopt a method of raising oaks almost precisely
like this which somewhat earlier had been adopted by Nature and her
squirrels here; they have simply rediscovered the value of pines as
nurses for oaks. The English experimenters seem, early and generally,
to have found out the importance of using trees of some kind as
nurse-plants for the young oaks. I quote from Loudon what he describes
as "the ultimatum on the subject of planting and sheltering
oaks,"--"an abstract of the practice adopted by the government
officers in the national forests" of England, prepared by Alexander
Milne.

At first some oaks had been planted by themselves, and others mixed
with Scotch pines; "but in all cases," says Mr. Milne, "where oaks
were planted actually among the pines and surrounded by them [though
the soil might be inferior], the oaks were found to be much the best. "
"For several years past, the plan pursued has been to plant the
inclosures with Scotch pines only [a tree very similar to our pitch
pine], and when the pines have got to the height of five or six feet,
then to put in good strong oak plants of about four or five years'
growth among the pines,--not cutting away any pines at first, unless
they happen to be so strong and thick as to overshadow the oaks. In
about two years it becomes necessary to shred the branches of the
pines, to give light and air to the oaks, and in about two or three
more years to begin gradually to remove the pines altogether, taking
out a certain number each year, so that, at the end of twenty or
twenty-five years, not a single Scotch pine shall be left; although,
for the first ten or twelve years, the plantation may have appeared to
contain nothing else but pine. The advantage of this mode of planting
has been found to be that the pines dry and ameliorate the soil,
destroying the coarse grass and brambles which frequently choke and
injure oaks; and that no mending over is necessary, as scarcely an oak
so planted is found to fail. "

Thus much the English planters have discovered by patient experiment,
and, for aught I know, they have taken out a patent for it; but they
appear not to have discovered that it was discovered before, and that
they are merely adopting the method of Nature, which she long ago made
patent to all. She is all the while planting the oaks amid the pines
without our knowledge, and at last, instead of government officers, we
send a party of woodchoppers to cut down the pines, and so rescue an
oak forest, at which we wonder as if it had dropped from the skies.

As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I hear the sound of green
pignuts falling from time to time, cut off by the chickaree over my
head. In the fall, I notice on the ground, either within or in the
neighborhood of oak woods, on all sides of the town, stout oak twigs
three or four inches long, bearing half a dozen empty acorn-cups,
which twigs have been gnawed off by squirrels, on both sides of the
nuts, in order to make them more portable. The jays scream and the red
squirrels scold while you are clubbing and shaking the chestnut trees,
for they are there on the same errand, and two of a trade never agree.
I frequently see a red or gray squirrel cast down a green chestnut
bur, as I am going through the woods, and I used to think, sometimes,
that they were cast at me. In fact, they are so busy about it, in the
midst of the chestnut season, that you cannot stand long in the woods
without hearing one fall. A sportsman told me that he had, the day
before,--that was in the middle of October,--seen a green chestnut bur
dropped on our great river meadow, fifty rods from the nearest wood,
and much further from the nearest chestnut tree, and he could not tell
how it came there. Occasionally, when chestnutting in midwinter, I
find thirty or forty nuts in a pile, left in its gallery, just under
the leaves, by the common wood mouse (_Mus leucopus_).

But especially, in the winter, the extent to which this transportation
and planting of nuts is carried on is made apparent by the snow. In
almost every wood, you will see where the red or gray squirrels have
pawed down through the snow in a hundred places, sometimes two feet
deep, and almost always directly to a nut or a pine cone, as directly
as if they had started from it and bored upward,--which you and I
could not have done. It would be difficult for us to find one before
the snow falls. Commonly, no doubt, they had deposited them there in
the fall. You wonder if they remember the localities, or discover them
by the scent. The red squirrel commonly has its winter abode in the
earth under a thicket of evergreens, frequently under a small clump of
evergreens in the midst of a deciduous wood. If there are any nut
trees which still retain their nuts standing at a distance without the
wood, their paths often lead directly to and from them. We therefore
need not suppose an oak standing here and there _in_ the wood in order
to seed it, but if a few stand within twenty or thirty rods of it, it
is sufficient.

I think that I may venture to say that every white pine cone that
falls to the earth naturally in this town, before opening and losing
its seeds, and almost every pitch pine one that falls at all, is cut
off by a squirrel, and they begin to pluck them long before they are
ripe, so that when the crop of white pine cones is a small one, as it
commonly is, they cut off thus almost every one of these before it
fairly ripens. I think, moreover, that their design, if I may so
speak, in cutting them off green, is, partly, to prevent their opening
and losing their seeds, for these are the ones for which they dig
through the snow, and the only white pine cones which contain anything
then. I have counted in one heap, within a diameter of four feet, the
cores of 239 pitch pine cones which had been cut off and stripped by
the red squirrel the previous winter.

The nuts thus left on the surface, or buried just beneath it, are
placed in the most favorable circumstances for germinating. I have
sometimes wondered how those which merely fell on the surface of the
earth got planted; but, by the end of December, I find the chestnut of
the same year partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the
decaying and mouldy leaves, where there is all the moisture and manure
they want, for the nuts fall fast. In a plentiful year, a large
proportion of the nuts are thus covered loosely an inch deep, and are,
of course, somewhat concealed from squirrels. One winter, when the
crop had been abundant, I got, with the aid of a rake, many quarts of
these nuts as late as the tenth of January, and though some bought at
the store the same day were more than half of them mouldy, I did not
find a single mouldy one among these which I picked from under the wet
and mouldy leaves, where they had been snowed on once or twice. Nature
knows how to pack them best. They were still plump and tender.
Apparently, they do not heat there, though wet. In the spring they
were all sprouting.

Loudon says that "when the nut [of the common walnut of Europe] is to
be preserved through the winter for the purpose of planting in the
following spring, it should be laid in a rot-heap, as soon as
gathered, with the husk on, and the heap should be turned over
frequently in the course of the winter. "

Here, again, he is stealing Nature's "thunder. " How can a poor mortal
do otherwise? for it is she that finds fingers to steal with, and the
treasure to be stolen. In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the
best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know
it. Generally, both large and small ones are most sure to germinate,
and succeed best, when only beaten into the earth with the back of a
spade, and then covered with leaves or straw. These results to which
planters have arrived remind us of the experience of Kane and his
companions at the north, who, when learning to live in that climate,
were surprised to find themselves steadily adopting the customs of the
natives, simply becoming Esquimaux. So, when we experiment in planting
forests, we find ourselves at last doing as Nature does. Would it not
be well to consult with Nature in the outset? for she is the most
extensive and experienced planter of us all, not excepting the Dukes
of Athol.

In short, they who have not attended particularly to this subject are
but little aware to what an extent quadrupeds and birds are employed,
especially in the fall, in collecting, and so disseminating and
planting, the seeds of trees. It is the almost constant employment of
the squirrels at that season, and you rarely meet with one that has
not a nut in its mouth, or is not just going to get one. One
squirrel-hunter of this town told me that he knew of a walnut tree
which bore particularly good nuts, but that on going to gather them
one fall, he found that he had been anticipated by a family of a dozen
red squirrels. He took out of the tree, which was hollow, one bushel
and three pecks by measurement, without the husks, and they supplied
him and his family for the winter. It would be easy to multiply
instances of this kind. How commonly in the fall you see the
cheek-pouches of the striped squirrel distended by a quantity of nuts!
This species gets its scientific name, _Tamias_, or the steward, from
its habit of storing up nuts and other seeds. Look under a nut tree a
month after the nuts have fallen, and see what proportion of sound
nuts to the abortive ones and shells you will find ordinarily. They
have been already eaten, or dispersed far and wide. The ground looks
like a platform before a grocery, where the gossips of the village sit
to crack nuts and less savory jokes. You have come, you would say,
after the feast was over, and are presented with the shells only.

Occasionally, when threading the woods in the fall, you will hear a
sound as if some one had broken a twig, and, looking up, see a jay
pecking at an acorn, or you will see a flock of them at once about it,
in the top of an oak, and hear them break them off. They then fly to a
suitable limb, and placing the acorn under one foot, hammer away at it
busily, making a sound like a woodpecker's tapping, looking round from
time to time to see if any foe is approaching, and soon reach the
meat, and nibble at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while they
hold the remainder very firmly with their claws. Nevertheless it often
drops to the ground before the bird has done with it. I can confirm
what William Bartram wrote to Wilson, the ornithologist, that "the jay
is one of the most useful agents in the economy of nature, for
disseminating forest trees and other nuciferous and hard-seeded
vegetables on which they feed. Their chief employment during the
autumnal season is foraging to supply their winter stores. In
performing this necessary duty they drop abundance of seed in their
flight over fields, hedges, and by fences, where they alight to
deposit them in the post-holes, etc. It is remarkable what numbers of
young trees rise up in fields and pastures after a wet winter and
spring. These birds alone are capable, in a few years' time, to
replant all the cleared lands. "

I have noticed that squirrels also frequently drop their nuts in open
land, which will still further account for the oaks and walnuts which
spring up in pastures, for, depend on it, every new tree comes from a
seed. When I examine the little oaks, one or two years old, in such
places, I invariably find the empty acorn from which they sprung.

So far from the seed having lain dormant in the soil since oaks grew
there before, as many believe, it is well known that it is difficult
to preserve the vitality of acorns long enough to transport them to
Europe; and it is recommended in Loudon's "Arboretum," as the safest
course, to sprout them in pots on the voyage. The same authority
states that "very few acorns of any species will germinate after
having been kept a year," that beech mast "only retains its vital
properties one year," and the black walnut "seldom more than six
months after it has ripened. " I have frequently found that in November
almost every acorn left on the ground had sprouted or decayed. What
with frost, drouth, moisture, and worms, the greater part are soon
destroyed. Yet it is stated by one botanical writer that "acorns that
have lain for centuries, on being ploughed up, have soon vegetated. "

Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable Report on the Trees and Shrubs
of this State, says of the pines: "The tenacity of life of the seeds
is remarkable. They will remain for many years unchanged in the
ground, protected by the coolness and deep shade of the forest above
them. But when the forest is removed, and the warmth of the sun
admitted, they immediately vegetate. " Since he does not tell us on
what observation his remark is founded, I must doubt its truth.
Besides, the experience of nursery-men makes it the more questionable.

The stories of wheat raised from seed buried with an ancient Egyptian,
and of raspberries raised from seed found in the stomach of a man in
England, who is supposed to have died sixteen or seventeen hundred
years ago, are generally discredited, simply because the evidence is
not conclusive.

Several men of science, Dr. Carpenter among them, have used the
statement that beach plums sprang up in sand which was dug up forty
miles inland in Maine, to prove that the seed had lain there a very
long time, and some have inferred that the coast has receded so far.
But it seems to me necessary to their argument to show, first, that
beach plums grow only on a beach. They are not uncommon here, which is
about half that distance from the shore; and I remember a dense patch
a few miles north of us, twenty-five miles inland, from which the
fruit was annually carried to market. How much further inland they
grow, I know not. Dr. Charles T. Jackson speaks of finding "beach
plums" (perhaps they were this kind) more than one hundred miles
inland in Maine.

It chances that similar objections lie against all the more notorious
instances of the kind on record.

Yet I am prepared to believe that some seeds, especially small ones,
may retain their vitality for centuries under favorable circumstances.
In the spring of 1859, the old Hunt house, so called, in this town,
whose chimney bore the date 1703, was taken down. This stood on land
which belonged to John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts,
and a part of the house was evidently much older than the above date,
and belonged to the Winthrop family. For many years I have ransacked
this neighborhood for plants, and I consider myself familiar with its
productions. Thinking of the seeds which are said to be sometimes dug
up at an unusual depth in the earth, and thus to reproduce long
extinct plants, it occurred to me last fall that some new or rare
plants might have sprung up in the cellar of this house, which had
been covered from the light so long. Searching there on the 22d of
September, I found, among other rank weeds, a species of nettle
(_Urtica urens_) which I had not found before; dill, which I had not
seen growing spontaneously; the Jerusalem oak (_Chenopodium Botrys_),
which I had seen wild in but one place; black nightshade (_Solanum
nigrum_), which is quite rare hereabouts, and common tobacco, which,
though it was often cultivated here in the last century, has for fifty
years been an unknown plant in this town, and a few months before this
not even I had heard that one man, in the north part of the town, was
cultivating a few plants for his own use. I have no doubt that some or
all of these plants sprang from seeds which had long been buried under
or about that house, and that that tobacco is an additional evidence
that the plant was formerly cultivated here. The cellar has been
filled up this year, and four of those plants, including the tobacco,
are now again extinct in that locality.

It is true, I have shown that the animals consume a great part of the
seeds of trees, and so, at least, effectually prevent their becoming
trees; but in all these cases, as I have said, the consumer is
compelled to be at the same time the disperser and planter, and this
is the tax which he pays to Nature. I think it is Linnaeus who says
that while the swine is rooting for acorns he is planting acorns.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has
been, I have great faith in a seed,--a, to me, equally mysterious
origin for it. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am
prepared to expect wonders. I shall even believe that the millennium
is at hand, and that the reign of justice is about to commence, when
the Patent Office, or Government, begins to distribute, and the people
to plant, the seeds of these things.

In the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to me from the Patent
Office, and labeled, I think, _Poitrine jaune grosse_, large yellow
squash. Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighed 1231/2 pounds,
the other bore four, weighing together 1861/4 pounds. Who would have
believed that there was 310 pounds of _poitrine jaune grosse_ in that
corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to catch it, my
ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which
unearthed it. A little mysterious hoeing and manuring was all the
_abracadabra presto-change_ that I used, and lo!