h a despairing crash, one great limb gives way and is torn bodily from
its place of growth. The very vitals of the tree are exposed and instantly
every splintered cell is filled with the sifting snow. Helpless the tree
stands, and early in the spring, at the first quickening of summer's
growth, a salve of curative resin is poured upon the wound. But it is too
late. The invading water has done its work and the elements have begun to
rot the very heart of the tree. How much more to be desired is the manner
of life and death of the first spruce, battling to the very last!

A beech seedling which takes root close to the bank of a stream has a good
chance of surviving, since there will be no competitors on the water side
and moisture and air will never fail. But look at some ancient beech
growing thus, whose smooth, whitened hole encloses a century of growth
rings. Offsetting its advantages, the stream, little by little, has
undermined the maze of roots and the force of annual freshets has trained
them all in a down-stream direction. It is an inverted reminder of the
wind-moulded spruce. Although the stout beech props itself by great roots
thrown landward, yet, sooner or later, the ripples will filter in beyond
the centre of gravity and the mighty tree will topple and mingle with its
shadow-double which for so many years the stream has reflected.

Thus we find that while without moisture no tree could exist, yet the same
element often brings death. The amphibious mangroves which fringe the
coral islands of the southern seas hardly attain to the dignity of trees,
but in the mysterious depths of our southern swamps we find the strangely
picturesque cypresses, which defy the waters about them. One cannot say
where trunk ends and root begins, but up from the stagnant slime rise
great arched buttresses, so that the tree seems to be supported on giant
six- or eight-legged stools, between the arches of which the water flows
and finds no chance to use its power. Here, in these lonely
solitudes,--heron-haunted, snake-infested,--the hanging moss and orchids
search out every dead limb and cover it with an unnatural greenness. Here,
great lichens grow and a myriad tropical insects bore and tunnel their way
from bark to heart of tree and back again. Here, in the blackness of
night, when the air is heavy with hot, swampy odours, and only the
occasional squawk of a heron or cry of some animal is heard, a rending,
grinding, crashing, breaks