Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1873-06-04
For the Waterman
Our Lecture on Trees---NO. 3.


add variety to the beauty of our land
seapes. And yet our early impressions
have misled us, as to the universality of
primitive forests over all the land. The old
Indian tradition as to the mammoth's bones
shows the limited extent of knowledge pos
sessed by these rowing sons of the forests
The old Indian account ran thus. "Ten
thousand moons ago, when nothing but
forests covered this land, these huge animals
lived, and devoured the forests before
them, and drank up the waters Of the
mighty rivers" But as our country has
become known, probably a major part of
the lands making up the national domain
have been destitute Of trees for centuries.
Massachusetts, and all New England, ex-
cepting here and there piece Of salt or
fresh meadow of nconsderable extent, was
once forest wilderness. So Of New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the
northerly and easterly parts of Indiana
and also all the States known as Southern
States, except Texas, which is the great
prairie State Of the South. But as we
come to Illinois, Iowa, part of Missouri
and Minnesota, and the vast territories ex-
tending from the Mississippi river to the
Pacific ocean, forests and trees are the ex-
cepNons, while grassy plains have subsisted
seemingly from the creation.
The timbers, SO called, of the Rocky
Mountains, and the Wasach and the Sierra
Nevada, as well as the foothills of Cali.
fornia, are but thin and scattered growth
of generally small and scraggy trees, either
oak or cedar. The pineries of Maine,
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, have
constituted the widest forests of the coun-
try But the wanton destruction of these
timber preserves will soon make these
forests things of the past. New York once
counted a mine of wealth in her pine
timber, but it is now gone. Such will be
the fate of all the pine forests of the great
northwest, long before comfortable houses
will be erected to shelter the people of the
prairies and the plains. The hard pine and
live oak Of the South have better prospect
for preservation.
If Wild grim solitudes are sought be-
meath the deep, dark woods, the forests OF
Louisiana are a fitting retreat for misan-
thropists and the desponding. The cypress
and the live oak bear aloft their thick,
leafy boughs that almost exclude the sun
light from the drowned lands, from which
their trunks come up as pillars for a vast
canopy Of leaves and moss-covered boughs
that render these retreats so fearful. Wild
aligators thropg these swamps, and seem to
enjoy monopoly of these retreats. If
the house Of the death and way to hell
were to have visible representation on
earth, they should be located in the forests
Of Louisiana. But | have already gone
over the plains to the height of the Sierras
and to the prairies down even to the great
Pacific sea.
We are told of trees in Asia whose
branches become the trunks of kindred
trees as their extremities bend down to
earth, and take root, so single tree be-
comes a forest. Big trees are mentioned
by Jesuit missionaries as nine fathoms in
side and sixteen fathoms outside, meaning
circumference of the hollow and of the ex-
terror of the trunk. A group of five chest
nut trees growing in the lava of Mount
Htna, in Sicily, measure 204 feet round,
and a hollow of some of these chestnut
trees is said to shelter hundred sheep. A
remarkable oak tree is mentioned in Eug-
land which was 54 feet in circumference,
and had a cavity within the trunk sufficient
to shelter l6 men. cite from Appletons
Journal statements of remarkable trees in
the Eastern world.
A type Of antiquity in the vegetable
kingdom is that of fg-tree in Ceylon
planted, according to documentary and ira
ditional evidence, 2Ss b. c., making it
two thousand one hundred and fty.fve
years old. Naturalists, however, compute
the age of the giant tree in Calaverus coun-
ty, California, from the number Of concen-
trio circles in the trunk. to be two thousand
five hundred and sixty.fvc years old.
If, however, we follow up the record Of
ancient trees, with the estimated age Of
EACH we must consider the remarkable cy-
press, with circumference of one hundred
and seventeen feet and ten inches, at Tax
odinne, in Mexico, which is said to be FIVE
thousand years old the sycamore Of the
Bosporus, four thousand and twenty the
yew Of Braburn, Kent, three thousand
also, the yew of Fotheringay, Scotland, two
thousand five hundred; the cedar of Mount
Lebanon, two thousand one hundred and
twelve the sycamore at Heiopolis, egh-
teen hundred and hye the yew trees at
Fountain Abbey and Crowhurst, Yorshire,
over thousand each--while there are 9TH
ers, in Eastern countries, famous in history,
hundreds Of years old.
We must not omit to mention the wond-
erful tree which so far commanded the adj
miration of the Emperor Napoleon as to
cause him to diverge from the direct line
by which he designed to construct a great
road over the Alps, that this tree might be
spared. This is the cypress Of Somma,
Lombardy, Italy, which is known as one of
the Oldest on record, being planted forty
two years before Christ,
n.,k L.. - AL