Two reflections are suggested by the paragraph we have just copied. The substance of one of them is noted in the Preface. "This volume," says the modest and sensible Springer, "makes no pretensions to literary merit; sooner would it claim kindred with the wild and uncultivated scenes of which it is but a simple relation." The second reflection is, that our wood-cutter is an enthusiast in his craft; for wood-cutting in Maine _is_ a craft, and no common log-chopping. To Springer, a towering grove of timber is as exciting a sight as is to the hunter that of a herd of antlered deer or shaggy buffalo. The pine especially is the object of his love and admiration. He abounds in anecdotes and arguments to prove its good qualities, and labours hard to establish its superiority to the oak. Reared amongst the noble pines of Maine, he says, even as a child, he could never hear, without feelings of jealousy, the oak extolled as monarch of the forest. Admitting it to excel in strength, he vaunts, upon the other hand, the superior grandeur and girth of the pine, its value in building, the breadth of its planks, their clearness, beauty, and freedom from knots, the numerous uses to which it is applicable, its excellence as fuel, its perfect adaptation to all the joiner's purposes. He extols in turn each of its varieties; the red pine, remarkable for its tall trunk, which sometimes rises eighty feet from the ground before putting out a limb; the pitch pine, inferior in size, but preferable to any other wood for generating steam in engines; the white pine, superior to all in value and dimensions. He tells us of pines, of which he has read or heard, of extraordinary grandeur and diameter: of one, two hundred and sixty-four feet long; and of another which, at three feet from the ground, was fifty-seven feet nine inches in circumference. These extraordinary specimens were cut some years ago. Trees of such dimensions are now rare.