In the immediate vicinity of the forest, the most striking thing in connexion with it is the ground which has been partially cleared by the axe of the settler, so that a short account of it may not be uninteresting to the reader. The trees, instead of being cut down close to the surface of the ground, are left standing to a height of five or six feet. The settler then ploughs round them, leaves them to rot, and when the roots become sufficiently decayed, he has recourse to leverage and the axe, by which means they are uprooted. Prior to this final extermination, the sight of columns of wood thickly planted over the ground in the neighbourhood of the original forest cannot fail to attract the attention of the traveller. The settler afterwards sets fire to some of them, and not being sufficiently dry from the sap still remaining, this process very frequently, instead of burning them to the ground, merely places a black coating of smoke upon their outer surface; sometimes they are consumed partially. The bark is usually stripped off the tree when it is felled, which is then quite white, and contrasts in a very marked manner with those that have been partially burnt; and others not being skinned alive, but being left in the possession of their original jackets of bark, contrasts very singularly with the two former.

Let the reader then picture to himself white, black, and bark-coloured trunks of trees standing in a field of a height of five to six feet, presenting themselves like columns of the desert to the eye of the traveller, and that in the immediate neighbourhood of the original forest. I was much struck with this very singular appearance, and never could get rid of the idea which associated itself with these tree trunks, especially when these columns rose to different heights, viz.: that it was a great vegetable cemetery. And such it

was, with this difference, that the trees were all murdered and burned alive in the place of their nativity.

In the neighbourhood of this cemetery of trees rises the great, gloomy, solemn, majestic forest composed of trees, tall, straight, and stately, very different in character to those splendid monarchs of the vegetable kingdom, the elms of Windsor Park. Most of them in that locality send off large branches within a few feet from the ground; branches so large at their base that with other smaller branches arising from it contain an amount of wood and a sufficiency of leaves to form a separate tree of itself. These branches extending right and left, and all round the trunk, present an outline not dissimilar to an umbrella. These fine old elm trees of Windsor are, perhaps, the noblest of their species to be found in Great Britain. I have sat under them during a botanical excursion once or twice, accompanied with other lovers of botany, and upon one occasion I regaled the old monarchs with one of my best solos on the flute, and I was so delighted and charmed with their noble appearance that I would not have parted with my simple and beautiful joys-no, not even for a title.

The trees of the American forest, however, assume quite another character. Instead of beginning to branch off within a few feet of the ground they rise tall, and as straight as the plummet line would fall, with a beautiful cylindrical trunk of equal thickness nearly from top to bottom, or with the slightest possible taper, and only begin to branch very near to the top, and that in a very thick, bunching, bushy manner. On the beautiful, tall, cylindrical trunk, smooth and round, rising to a height of from sixty to eighty feet and upwards, not even a twig is to be found growing on its fine round surface between its base and that part where its branches begin.

In our English woods we almost invariably find under the trees what is called underwood consisting of nut, hazel, and others, with a profusion of briers, hawthorn, scrub, &c., with nettles, thistles, and many other species of herbaceous plants. With such a variety of underwood associated with other herbaceous plants, an excursion in one of our woods is attended not only with the annoyance of attacks from nettles and thistles, but frequently from briers possessed of thin prickles which not only inflict pain, but a nasty wound attended with considerable hemorrhage may be the result.

In some of the woods in the county of Sussex, where woodcock abound, the sportsman requires a demi suit of armour for his legs, consisting of leather of a peculiar sort, and a jacket of fustian of the strongest kind, in order to resist the many attacks of these vegetable assailants. To fall at any time is a serious thing, especially to an elderly person, and above all to the mal à droit. In the middle of this thickset accumulation of scrub there are frequently long tough briers which not only prick and wound, but encircle, and crib and confine you as safely as if you were in a lock-up.

Another kind of annoyance in these copses and woods is what is termed a lawyer by the sportsmen and peasantry, the fibres of which are so tough that it might be compared to a pin wire. It is found secreted in the long grass, being as invisible to the sportsmen as a penny in a pond, so that the pedestrian of the woods, in pursuing either his game, or in searching for plants, may be knocked down in a moment without the slightest warning, and as fairly horizontalized as if a discharge of musketry had shot him through the heart, and that in a second of time, perhaps with his head erect looking towards the heavens; or, if he should not happen to fall from the attack, the staggering gait

with which he starts after the shock is so ludicrous in manner both to the sportsman and his companions that the sudden sensation of surprise and fear must be enjoyed practically in order to be duly appreciated. These are some of the inconveniences connected with a walk in an English wood.

In the American forest, however, a very opposite state of things is found to exist. In the first place there is an entire absence of those long tall thickets, known by the name of underwood, not a nettle, thistle, brier, nor hawthorn to be found, and what is more, on the surface of the ground grow neither grasses, mosses, or any green thing belonging to the vegetable world.

The traveller may walk under the shade of these solemn trees, where the surface of the ground is perfectly level and so smooth that if a mouse were to jump up before him the sportsman would not only be able to see it but shoot it also, if a good shot. His progress, however, at times will be interrupted by a scene and circumstance peculiar to these stupendous forests. The roots of the trees, instead of striking deep down into the soil, extend horizontally and form an extensive network by the intertwining and anastomosing of its thickly set fibres, extending like radii of a circle to a much greater distance from the trunk than in the common trees of Europe. When the tree is blown down it consequently drags up at the root an immense portion of earth, and when the trunk is completely prostrate the extreme fibrous roots are brought into perfectly perpendicular position, thus having the appearance of a little hill placed upon the flat surface of the earth. When many of these trees are lying prostrate together a plateau, or little table land in miniature, is formed, not however without its several irregularities.

Another scene connected with these extraordinary

This

forests is a thing as perfectly peculiar to America as its great lakes and rivers, which are remarkable for possessing features which they may claim, with great justice, as being exclusively their own. scene is the fall of the leaf. Let the reader call to his assistance all the different kinds of sunsets of every latitude he may have witnessed during his lifetime; let him picture to himself the various and beautiful vivid colours belonging to the gay, and sparkling, and variegated tribe of humming birds, and of every other kind of bird; let him think of all the delicately tinted fruits and flowers he may have observed during his existence, and let him not forget to recall every tint and colour of the many gems that bedeck the fair person of the ballroom lady; let him conjure up to his view all that an exhibition of fireworks ever presented to his sight, and remember some of the flare-up scenes produced at our theatres at the termination of a ballet performance in a Christmas pantomime; let him also recollect some of the most beautiful insects and fishes he may have come across; let him call to his aid all kinds of chemical experiments, smoking factories differently tinted by the sun, Mount Vesuvius in a state of eruption by night or by day, the electric fluid dancing in the heavens, the most lovely woman he ever beheld in any country, and of all countries, and then he will see the American forest no more accurately pourtrayed in all its different tints and endless variety of colours than sound could be represented upon canvass, or brilliant colours presented to the capacity of a blind man. Every description of this great, unique, and unrivalled scene must be negative. It is the indescribable. Like the great Niagara, and the storm at sea, or the magnificent sunsets of tropical regions, it must be witnessed to be understood.

One feature of it, however, may be somewhat