Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FOREST RECOLLECTIONS. Having been born on the very margin of the continuous woods, the dear old woods, and been somewhat of a wanderer among them in my earlier and later years, I propose to have a quiet talk about them with those who can appreciate their manifold influences. While endeavouring to communicate a certain amount of information, I shall speak more as a lover of nature and the picturesque than as a student of science. The subject is fruitful in more senses than one, and as the forests of the United States, in their variety and extent, are unsurpassed by those of any other country, it will be my own fault if I cannot entertain my readers for a short time with a few personal recollections. Before proceeding, however, a single remark on the woodlands of the country in regard to growth may be acceptable. The woody species of our flora number about eight hundred; of these, three hundred grow to the size of trees, one hundred and twenty attain a considerable size, twenty reach the height of one hundred feet, twelve over two hundred feet, and five or six about three hundred feet. The forests of the Ear West are almost entirely coniferous; and the hard wood forests are chiefly found in the central portions of the United States. I begin my remarks with the pine forests of Maine. Their extent can only be realised by fixing the mind upon the whole northern half of the State, which theycover with their sombre green, and by remembering the fact that no less than four splendid rivers have their birth in this great wilderness the St. Croix, the Pen obscot, the Kennebec, and the Androscoggin. According to such figures as I have been able to collect, the number of saw mills and other lumbering machines in operation on the above rivers, just before the rebellion, was nearly nine h...
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