Looking Now At The Forests In A Comprehensive Way, We Find In Passing
Through Them Again And Again From The
Shores of the Sound to their
upper limits, that some portions are much older than others, the trees
much larger,
And the ground beneath them strewn with immense trunks in
every stage of decay, representing several generations of growth,
everything about them giving the impression that these are indeed the
"forests primeval," while in the younger portions, where the elevation
of the ground is the same as to the sea level and the species of trees
are the same as well as the quality of the soil, apart from the
moisture which it holds, the trees seem to be and are mostly of the
same age, perhaps from one hundred to two or three hundred years, with
no gray-bearded, venerable patriarchs - forming tall, majestic woods
without any grandfathers.
When we examine the ground we find that it is as free from those
mounds of brown crumbling wood and mossy ancient fragments as are the
growing trees from very old ones. Then perchance, we come upon a
section farther up the slopes towards the mountains that has no trees
more than fifty years old, or even fifteen or twenty years old. These
last show plainly enough that they have been devastated by fire, as
the black, melancholy monuments rising here and there above the young
growth bear witness. Then, with this fiery, suggestive testimony, on
examining those section whose trees are a hundred years old or two
hundred, we find the same fire records, though heavily veiled with
mosses and lichens, showing that a century or two ago the forests that
stood there had been swept away in some tremendous fire at a time when
rare conditions of drouth made their burning possible.
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