Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 | Page 4

proportion of Pines the perfection
of this scenery is witnessed. Something is needful to relieve the eye as
it wanders over such a profusion of brilliant colors. Pine woods provide
this relief, and cause the tinted forest groups to stand out in greater
prominence. In many districts where Pines were the original growth,
they still constitute the larger sylvan assemblages, while the deciduous
trees stand in scattered groups on the edge of the forest, and the
contiguous plain. The verdurous Pine wood forms a picturesque
groundwork to set off the various groups in front of it; and the effect of
a scarlet Oak or Tupelo rising like a spire of flame in the midst of
verdure is far more striking than if it stood where it was unaffected by
contrast.
The cause of the superior tinting of the American forest, compared with
that of Europe, has never been satisfactorily explained, though it seems
to be somewhat inexplicably connected with the brightness of the
American climate. It is a subject that has not engaged the attention of
scientific travellers, who seem to have regarded it as worthy only of the
describer of scenery. It may, however, deserve more attention as a

scientific fact than has been generally supposed,--particularly as one of
the phenomena that perhaps distinguish the productions of the eastern
from those of the western coasts of the two grand divisions of the earth.
I have observed that the Smoke-tree, which is a Sumach from China,
and the Cydonia Japonica, are as brightly colored in autumn as any of
our indigenous shrubs; while the Silver-Maple, which, though
indigenous in the Western States, probably originated on the western
coast of America, shows none of the fine tinting so remarkable in the
other American Maples. These facts have led me to conjecture that this
superior tinting of the autumnal foliage may be peculiar to the eastern
coasts both of the Old and the New Continent, in the northern
hemisphere. May not this phenomenon bear some relation to the colder
winters and the hotter summers of the eastern compared with the
western coasts? I offer this suggestion as a query, not as a theory, and
with the hope that it may induce travellers to make some particular
observations in reference to it.
The indigenous trees of America, or rather of the Atlantic side of this
continent, are remarkable not only for their superior autumnal hues, but
also for the shorter period during which the foliage remains on the trees
and retains its verdure. Our fruit-trees, which are all exotics, retain their
foliage long after our forest-trees are leafless; and if we visit an
arboretum in the latter part of October, we may select the American
from the foreign species, by observing that the latter are still green,
while the others are either entirely denuded, or in that colored array
which immediately precedes the fall of the leaf. The exotics may
likewise be distinguished in the spring by their precocity,--their leaves
being out a week or ten days earlier than the leaves of our trees. Hence,
if we take both the spring and autumn into the account, the foreign, or
rather the European species, show a period of verdure of three or four
weeks' greater duration than the American species. Many of the former,
like the Weeping Willow, do not lose their verdure, nor shed their
leaves, until the first wintry blasts of November freeze them upon their
branches and roll them into a crisp.
In a natural forest there is a very small proportion of perfectly formed
trees; and these occur only in such places as permit some individuals to
stand isolated from the rest, and to spread out their branches to their
full extent. When we walk in a forest, we observe several conditions

which are favorable to this full expansion of their forms. On the borders
of a pond or morass, or of an extensive quarry, the trees extend their
branches into the opening, but, as they are cramped on the opposite side,
they are only half developed. But this expansion takes place on the side
that is exposed to view: hence the incomparable beauty of a wood on
the borders of a pond, or on the banks of a river, as viewed from the
water; also of a wood on the outside of an islet in a lake or river.
Fissures or cavities sometimes occur in a large rock, allowing a solitary
tree that has become rooted there to attain its full proportions. It is in
such places, and on sudden eminences that rise above the forest-level,
on a precipice, for example, that overlooks the surrounding wood, that
the forest shows individual trees possessing the characters of standards,
like those we see by the roadsides and in the open field. We must