“In this economy, nature only follows the analogy which she displays in modifying the influence of cold upon the animal kingdom. The quadrupeds, which are destined to encounter the severity of an Arctic winter, are provided with thick and shaggy coats, to enable them to withstand the intensity of the cold; and all the richest furs, which man employs to supply his natural, or rather his artificial wants, are always furnished by animals inhabiting the highest latitudes, and killed during the severest frosts. What is still more illustrative of the point under consideration is, that the coats of animals, of which the thin and short hair is familiar to us in the temperate climates, such as the dog, the fox, and the ox, are all remarkable, under the polar regions, for their close, lengthened, and almost impenetrable fibre, as a secure barrier of non-conducting matter, to prevent the escape of their vital heat. {260} “In like manner, in all the other relations, we see Nature especially accommodating the character of each individual plant, to the exigencies of its particular situation. In the interior of woods, the wind can exert a far less mechanical effect on individual trees; and therefore, while they are _positively_ determined to push upwards towards the light, they are _negatively_ permitted to do so, by the removal of any necessity to thicken their trunks, for the sake of greater strength, and to contract the height of them, in order to afford the blast a shorter lever against the roots. But, with trees in an open situation, all this is widely different. There they are freely exposed to the wind, and the large expansion of their branches, gives every advantage to the violence of the storm. Nature, accordingly, bestows greater proportional thickness, and less proportional elevation on trees, which are isolated, or nearly so; while their system of root, which, by necessity, is correlatively proportional to their system of top, affords likewise heavier ballast, and a stronger anchorage, in order to counteract the greater spread of sail, displayed in the wider expansion of the branches. “Every individual tree is thus a beautiful system of qualities, specially relative to the place which it holds in creation; of provisions admirably {261} accommodated to the peculiar circumstances of its case. Here every thing is necessary; nothing is redundant. In the words of a great philosopher, who was an accurate observer of nature, ‘Where the necessity is obviated, the remedy, by consequence, is withdrawn.’ If these facts and reasonings be correctly stated, the only rational theory of the removal of large trees consists, in prospectively maintaining the same harmony between the existing provisions of the tree, and the exigencies of its new situation, as had previously subsisted between its relative properties and the circumstances of its former site.”