The common pitch, or, as it is generally called, Norway pine, grows from a seed, which is matured in vast abundance in the large cones peculiar to the pines. This seed is of a rather triangular shape, thick and heavy at the part by which it grows from the cone, and terminating in a broad membranous fan or sail, which, when the seeds are shaken out by the wind, enables them to sail obliquely through the air to great distances. Should an old corn-field, or other piece of ground, be thrown out of cultivation for more than one season, it is sown with pine-seeds by the winds, and the young pines shoot up as closely and compactly as hemp. They continue to grow in this manner until they become twelve or fifteen feet high, until their roots begin to encroach on each other, or until the stoutest and best rooted begin to overtop so as entirely to shade the smaller. These gradually begin to fail, and finally dry up and perish, and a similar process is continued until the best trees acquire room enough to grow without impediment. Even when the young pines have attained to thirty or forty feet in height, and are as thick as a man's thigh, they stand so closely together that their lower branches, which are all dry and dead, are intermingled sufficiently to prevent any one from passing between the trees, without first breaking these obstructions away. I have seen such a wood as that just mentioned, covering an old corn-field, whose ridges were still distinctly to be traced, and which an old resident informed me he had seen growing in corn. In a part of this wood, which was not far from my dwelling, I had a delightful retreat, that served me as a private study or closet, though enjoying all the advantages of the open air. A road that had once passed through the field, and was of course more compacted than any other part, had denied access to the pine-seeds for a certain distance, while on each side of it they grew with their usual density. The ground was covered with the soft layer or carpet of dried pine leaves which gradually and imperceptibly fall throughout the year, making a most pleasant surface to tread on, and rendering the step perfectly noiseless. By beating off with a stick all the dried branches that projected towards the vacant space, I formed a sort of chamber, fifteen or twenty feet long, which above was canopied by the densely-mingled branches of the adjacent trees, which altogether excluded or scattered the rays of the sun, and on all sides was so shut in by the trunks of the young trees, as to prevent all observation. Hither, during the hot season, I was accustomed to retire for the purpose of reading or meditation; and within this deeper solitude, where all was solitary, very many of the subsequent movements of my life were suggested or devised.