The pine-tree displayed on the escutcheon of Vermont is now no more significant of the products of the commonwealth than is the wheat sheaf it bears; for almost the last of the old pines are gone with the century that nursed their growth, and the ponderous rafts of spars and square timber that once made their frequent and unreturning voyages northward have not been seen for more than half a century. The havoc of deforesting is not stayed, nor like to be while forest tracts remain. The devouring locomotive, spendthrift waste thoughtless of the future, the pulp-mill, and kindred wood consumers gnaw with relentless persistence upon every variety of tree growth that the ooze of the swamp or the thin soil of the mountain side yet nourishes. In 1808, only a year after Fulton's successful experiment on the Hudson, a steamer was launched at Burlington on Lake Champlain, and astonished her spectators by her wonderful performance as she churned her way through the waters at the rate of five miles an hour. In 1815 a company was granted the exclusive right of the steam navigation of Lake Champlain, but the unjust monopoly was presently canceled. In later years the steamers of the lake were celebrated for the excellence of their appointments and superior management, a reputation which they still maintain, though the railroads that skirt their thoroughfare on either side have drawn from them the greater share of the patronage which they once enjoyed. All the various industries have been given an impetus by the railroad system which now meshes the State, and knits it closer to the others of the Union. With these changes in business and methods, and this constant intercourse with all inhabitants of the republic, the quaint individuality of the earlier people is fast dissolving into commonplace likeness, so that now the typical Green Mountain Boy of the olden time endures only like an ancient pine that, spared by some chance, rears its rugged crest above the second growth, still awaiting the tempest or the axe that shall lay it low; yet as the pine, changing its habit of growth with changed conditions, is still a pine, so the Vermonter of to-day, when brought to the test, proves to be of the same tough fibre as were his ancestors.