without moisture the light can favor no growth of fern or moss or lichen, which loves a damp atmosphere; and without these lowly plants no insect or bird life can flourish. Another inhospitable tree is the pine. Its degree of selfishness varies with the species, some being much more tolerant of alien life than others; the common larch being, perhaps, the least exclusive, and the aurucaria the most. The trunk and branches of the larch are covered from head to foot with tufts and rosettes of hoary lichens, which cling specially to this tree and give it a most venerable appearance; but the aurucaria surrounds itself with an impenetrable armor of vegetable spears and daggers, within whose formidable circle no living thing dare intrude. I once saw a squirrel skipping along a lawn, and suddenly stopping at the foot of a tall, wide-spreading aurucaria, it looked up at the bristling trunk and branches with evident astonishment, as if it had never seen anything of the kind before; and with an expression of disappointment and fear that was almost human, and certainly was exceedingly comical, it turned away and climbed up a more propitious looking species of pine near at hand. But whatever may be the case in regard to individual trees, the pine tribe in its social character is decidedly inhospitable. A pine wood is one of the loneliest scenes in nature, not merely as regards the intrusion of man, but as regards the intrusion of any other living thing. Nothing breaks up its uniformity and monotony. It has none of the rich variety of life that characterizes other woods. The seasons themselves make no impression upon it, for it is dressed in perennial green, and it retains its shade alike in summer’s heat and winter’s desolation. It prevents all undergrowth; no brambles dare to stretch their long, trailing, thorny arms—like the feelers of some creature of prey—within its guarded enclosure. No wild roses can open their trembling petals white with fear, or crimson with blushes, in its solemn sanctuary. No hazel bush will drop there its ringlets of smoking catkins in spring, or its ruddy clusters of nuts in autumn. No mimic sunshine of primrose tufts, no pale star-beams of anemone or sorrel will light up its gloom. No glimpses of blue sky are let into it by hyacinths, or bluebells, or violets. To all the lowly plants that find refuge in other woods, and in turn adorn and beautify their hosts, the pine trees in their dignified independence refuse admission. No song of bird or hum of insect is heard beneath their boughs. And on the ground below, strewn deep with a carpet of brown needles and emptied cones that have silently dropped in the course of long years from overhead, and are slow to decay, only a few yellow toadstools and one or two splendid scarlet mushrooms make up for the painful dearth of vegetation. It seems as if the balsamic breath of the pines, which is so wholesome to human life—guarding off all fevers