How many of us think of trees almost as we do of the rocks and stones
about us,--as all but inanimate objects, standing in the same relation to
our earth as does the furry covering of an animal to its owner. The simile
might be carried out more in detail, the forests protecting the continents
from drought and flood, even as the coat of fur protects its owner from
extremes of heat and cold.
When we come to consider the tree as a living individual, a form of life
contemporaneous with our own, and to realise that it has its birth and
death, its struggles for life and its periods of peace and abundance, we
will soon feel for it a keener sympathy and interest and withal a
veneration greater than it has ever aroused in us before.
Of all living things on earth, a tree binds us most closely to the past.
Some of the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands are thought to be
four hundred years old and are probably the oldest animals on the earth.
There is, however, nothing to compare with the majesty and grandeur of the
Sequoias--the giant redwoods of California--the largest of which, still
living, reach upward more than one hundred yards above the ground, and
show, by the number of their rings, that their life began from three to
five thousand years ago. Our deepest feelings of reverence are aroused
when we look at a tree which was "one thousand years old when Homer wrote
the Iliad; fifteen hundred years of age when Aristotle was foreshadowing
his evolution theory and writing his history of animals; two thousand
years of age when Christ walked upon earth; nearly four thousand years of
age when the 'Origin of Species' was written. Thus the life of one of
these trees spanned the whole period before the birth of Aristotle (384
B.C.) and after the death of Darwin (A.D. 1882), the two greatest natural
philosophers who have lived."
Considered not only individually, but taken as a group, the Sequoias are
among the oldest of the old. Geologically speaking, most of the forms of
life now in existence are of recent origin, but a full ten million of
years ago these giant trees were developed almost as highly as they are
to-day. At the end of the coal period, when the birds and mammals of
to-day were as yet unevolved, existing only potentially in the scaly,
reptile-like creatures of those days, the Sequoias waved their needles
high in air.
In those days these great trees were found over the whole of Canada,
Greenland, and Siberia, but the relentless onslaught of the Ice Age
wrought terrible destruction and, like the giant tortoises among reptiles,
the apteryx among birds, and the bison among mammals, the forlorn hope of
the great redwoods, making a last stand in a few small groves of
California, awaits total extinction at the hands of the most terrible of
Nature's enemies--man. When the last venerable giant trunk has fallen, the
last axe-stroke which severs the circle of vital sap will cut the only
thread of individual life which joins in time the beating of our pulses
to-day with the beginning of human history and philosophy,--thousands of
years in the past.
Through all the millions of years during which the evolution of modern
forms of life has been going on, then as now, trees must have entered
prominently into the environment and lives of the terrestrial animals.
Ages ago, long before snakes and four-toed horses were even foreshadowed,
and before the first bird-like creatures had appeared, winged
reptile-dragons flew about, doubtless roosting or perching on the Triassic
and Jurassic trees. Perhaps the very pieces of coal which are burned in
our furnaces once bent and swayed under the weight of these bulky animals.
Something like six millions of years ago, long-tailed, fluttering birds
appeared, with lizard-like claws at the bend of their wings and with jaws
filled with teeth. These creatures were certainly arboreal, spending most
of their time among the branches of trees. So large were certain great
sloth-like creatures that they uprooted the trees bodily, in order to feed
on their succulent leaves, sometimes bending their trunks down until their
branches were within reach.
On a walk through the woods and fields to-day, how seldom do we find a
dead insect! When sick and dying, nine out of ten are snapped up by frog,
lizard, or bird; the few which die a natural death seeming to disintegrate
into mould within a very short space of time. There is, however, one way
in which, through the long, long thousands of centuries, insects have been
preserved. The spicy resin which flowed from the ancient pines attracted
hosts of insects, which, tempted by their hope of food, met their
death--caught and slowly but surely enclosed by the viscid sap, each
antenna and hair as perfect as when the insect was alive. Thus, in this
strangely fortunate way, we may know and study the insects which, millions
of years ago, fed on the flowers or bored into the bark of trees. We have
found no way to improve on Nature in this respect, for to-day when we
desire to mount a specimen permanently for microscopical work, we imbed it
in Canada balsam.
If suddenly the earth should be bereft of all trees, there would indeed be
consternation and despair among many classes of animals. Although in the
sea there are thousands of creatures, which, by their manner of life, are
prohibited from ever passing the boundary line between land and water, yet
many sea-worms, as for example the teredo, or ship-worm, are especially
fashioned for living in and perhaps feeding on wood, in the shape of stray
floating trees and branches, the bottoms of ships, and piles of wharves.
Of course the two latter are supplied by man, but even before his time,
floating trees at sea must have been plentiful enough to supply homes for
the whole tribe of these creatures, unless they made their burrows in
coral or shells.
The insects whose very existence, in some cases, depends upon trees, are
innumerable. What, for example, would become of the larvae of the cicada,
or locust, which, in the cold and darkness of their subterranean life, for
seventeen years suck the juicy roots of trees; or the caterpillars of the
moths, spinning high their webs among the leaves; or the countless beetles
whose grubs bore through and through the trunk their sinuous, sawdusty
tunnels; or the ichneumon fly, which with an instrument--surgical needle,
file, augur, and scroll saw all in one--deposits, deep below the bark, its
eggs in safety? If forced to compete with terrestrial species, the tree
spiders and scorpions would quickly become exterminated; while especially
adapted arboreal ants would instantly disappear.
We cannot entirely exclude even fishes from our list; as the absence of
mangroves would incidentally affect the climbing perch and catfishes! The
newts and common toads would be in no wise dismayed by the passing of the
trees, but not so certain tadpoles. Those of our ditches, it is true,
would live and flourish, but there are, in the world, many curious kinds
which hatch and grow up into frogs in curled-up leaves or in damp places
in the forks of branches, and which would find themselves homeless without
trees. Think, too, of the poor green and brown tree frogs with their
sucker feet, compelled always to hop along the ground!
Lizards, from tiny swifts to sixty-inch iguanas, would sorely miss the
trees, while the lithe green tree snakes and the tree boas would have to
change all their life habits in order to be able to exist. But as for the
cold, uncanny turtles and alligators,--what are trees to them!
In the evolution of the birds and other animals, the cry of "excelsior"
has been followed literally as well as theoretically and, with a few
exceptions, the highest in each class have not only risen above their
fellows in intelligence and structure, but have left the earth and climbed
or flown to the tree-tops, making these their chief place of abode.
Many of the birds which find their food at sea, or in the waters of stream
and lake, repair to the trees for the purpose of building their nests
among the branches. Such birds are the pelicans, herons, ibises, and
ospreys; while the wood ducks lay their eggs high above the ground in the
hollows of trees. Parrots, kingfishers, swifts, and hummingbirds are
almost helpless on the ground, their feet being adapted for climbing about
the branches, perching on twigs, or clinging to the hollows of trees.
Taken as a whole, birds would suffer more than any other class of
creatures in a deforested world. The woodpeckers would be without home,
food, and resting-place; except, possibly, the flicker, or high-hole, who
is either a retrograde or a genius, whichever we may choose to consider
him, and could live well enough upon ground ants. But as to his nest--he
would have to sharpen his wits still more to solve successfully the
question of the woodpecker motto, "What is home without a hollow tree?"
Great gaps would be made in the ranks of the furry creatures--the mammals.
Opossums and raccoons would find themselves in an embarrassing position,
and as for the sloths, which never descend to earth, depending for
protection on their resemblance to leaves and mossy bark, they would be
wiped out with one fell swoop. The arboreal squirrels might learn to
burrow, as so many of their near relations have done, but their muscles
would become cramped from inactivity and their eyes would often strain
upward for a glimpse of the beloved branches. The bats might take to caves
and the vampires to outhouses and dark crevices in the rocks, but most of
the monkeys and apes would soon become extinct, while a chimpanzee or
orang-utan would become a cripple, swinging ever painfully along between
the knuckles of crutch-like forearms, searching, searching forever for the
trees which gave him his form and structure, and without which his life
and that of his race must abruptly end.
Leaving the relations which trees hold to the animals about them and the
part which they have played in the evolution of life on the earth in past
epochs, let us consider some of the more humble trees about us. Not,
however, from the standpoint of the technical botanist or the scientific
forester, but from the sympathetic point of view of a living fellow form,
sharing the same planet, both owing their lives to the same great source
of all light and heat, and subject to the same extremes of heat and cold,
storm and drought. How wonderful, when we come to think of it, is a tree,
to be able to withstand its enemies, elemental and animate, year after
year, decade after decade, although fast-rooted to one patch of earth. An
animal flees to shelter at the approach of gale or cyclone, or travels far
in search of abundant food. Like the giant algae, ever waving upward from
the bed of the sea, which depend on the nourishment of the surrounding
waters, so the tree blindly trusts to Nature to minister to its needs,
filling its leaves with the light-given greenness, and feeling for
nutritious salts with the sensitive tips of its innumerable rootlets.
Darwin has taught us, and truly, that a relentless struggle for existence
is ever going on around us, and although this is most evident to our eyes
in a terrible death battle between two great beasts of prey, yet it is no
less real and intense in the case of the bird pouring forth a beautiful
song, or the delicate violet shedding abroad its perfume. To realise the
host of enemies ever shadowing the feathered songster and its kind, we
have only to remember that though four young birds may be hatched in each
of fifty nests, yet of the two hundred nestlings an average often of but
one lives to grow to maturity,--to migrate and to return to the region of
its birth.
And the violet, living, apparently, such a quiet life of humble sweetness?
Fortunate indeed is it if its tiny treasure of seeds is fertilized, and
then the chances are a thousand to one that they will grow and ripen only
to fall by the wayside, or on barren ground, or among the tares.
At first thought, a tree seems far removed from all such struggles. How
solemn and grand its trunk stands, column-like against the sky! How puny
and weak we seem beside it! Its sturdy roots, sound wood, and pliant
branches all spell power. Nevertheless, the old, old struggle is as
fierce, as unending, here as everywhere. A monarch of the forest has
gained its supremacy only by a lifelong battle with its own kind and with
a horde of alien enemies.
From the heart of the tropics to the limit of tree-growth in the northland
we find the battle of life waged fiercely, root contending with root for
earth-food, branch with branch for the light which means life.
In a severe wrestling match, the moments of supremest strain are those
when the opponents are fast-locked, motionless, when the advantage comes,
not with quickness, but with staying power; and likewise in the struggle
of tree with tree the fact that one or two years, or even whole decades,
watch the efforts of the branches to lift their leaves one above the
other, detracts nothing from the bitterness of the strife.
Far to the north we will sometimes find groves of young balsam firs or
spruce,--hundreds of the same species of sapling growing so close together
that a rabbit may not pass between. The slender trunks, almost touching
each other, are bare of branches. Only at the top is there light and air,
and the race is ever upward. One year some slight advantage may come to
one young tree,--some delicate unbalancing of the scales of life, and that
fortunate individual instantly responds, reaching several slender side
branches over the heads of his brethren. They as quickly show the effects
of the lessened light and forthwith the race is at an end. The victor
shoots up tall and straight, stamping and choking out the lives at his
side, as surely as if his weapons were teeth and claws instead of delicate
root-fibres and soughing foliage.
The contest with its fellows is only the first of many. The same elements
which help to give it being and life are ever ready to catch it unawares,
to rend it limb from limb, or by patient, long-continued attack bring it
crashing to the very dust from which sprang the seed.
We see a mighty spruce whose black leafage has waved above its fellows for
a century or more, paying for its supremacy by the distortion of every
branch. Such are to be seen clinging to the rocky shores of Fundy, every
branch and twig curved toward the land; showing the years of battling with
constant gales and blizzards. Like giant weather-vanes they stand, and,
though there is no elasticity in their limbs and they are gnarled and
scarred, yet our hearts warm in admiration of their decades of patient
watching beside the troubled waters. For years to come they will defy
every blast the storm god can send against them, until, one wild day, when
the soil has grown scanty around the roots of one of the weakest, it will
shiver and tremble at some terrific onslaught of wind and sleet; it will
fold its branches closer about it and, like the Indian chieftains, who
perhaps in years past occasionally watched the waters by the side of the
young sapling, the conquered tree will bow its head for the last time to
the storm.
Farther inland, sheltered in a narrow valley, stands a sister tree, seeded
from the same cone as the storm-distorted spruce. The wind shrieks and
howls above the little valley and cannot enter; but the law of
compensation brings to bear another element, silent, gentle, but as deadly
as the howling blast of the gale. All through the long winter the snow
sifts softly down, finding easy lodgment on the dense-foliaged branches.
From the surrounding heights the white crystals pour down until the tree
groans with the massive weight. Her sister above is battling with the
storm, but hardly a feather's weight of snow clings to her waving limbs.
The compressed, down-bent branches of the valley spruce soon become
permanently bent and the strain on the trunk fibres is great. At last,
with 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 suddenly upon the stillness, a distant boom and
splash, awakening every creature. Then the silence again closes down and
we know that a cypress, perhaps linking a trio of centuries, has yielded
up its life.
Leaving the hundred other mysteries which the trees of the tropics might
unfold, let us consider for a moment the danger which the tall, successful
tree invites,--the penalty which it pays for having surpassed all its
other brethren. It preeminently attracts the bolts of Jove and the lesser
trees see a blinding flash, hear a rending of heart wood, and when the
storm has passed, the tree, before perfect in trunk, limbs, and foliage,
is now but a heap of charred splinters.
Many a great willow overhanging the banks of a wide river could tell
interesting tales of the scars on its trunk. That lower wound was a deep
gash cut by some Indian, perhaps to direct a war-party making their way
through the untrodden wilderness; this bare, unsightly patch was burnt out
by the signal fire of one of our forefather pioneers. And so on and on the
story would unfold, until the topmost, freshly sawed-off limb had for its
purpose only the desire of the present owner for a clearer view of the
water beyond.
Finally we come to the tree best beloved of us in the north,--the
carefully grafted descendant of some sour little wild crab-apple. A
faithful servant indeed has the monarch of the old orchard proved. It has
fed us and our fathers before us, and its gnarled trunk and low-hanging
branches tell the story of the rosy fruit which has weighed down its limbs
year after year. Old age has laid a heavy hand upon it, but not until the
outermost twig has ceased to blossom, and its death, unlike that of its
wild kindred, has come silently and peacefully, do we give the order to
have the tree felled. Even in its death it serves us, giving back from the
open hearth the light and heat which it has stored up throughout the
summers of many years.
Let us give more thought to the trees about us, and when possible succour
them in distress, straighten the bent sapling, remove the parasitic
lichen, and give them the best chance for a long, patient, strong life.
In the far North stands a Pine-tree, lone,
Upon a wintry height;
It sleeps; around it snows have thrown
A covering of white.
It dreams forever of a Palm
That, far i' the morning-land,
Stands silent in a most sad calm
Midst of the burning sand.
(_From the German of Heine._) SIDNEY LANIER.