In a climate like our own we cannot, like the Greek, suppose a Nymph in the shape of a lovely young woman watching over the spring, for she would infallibly suffer from rheumatism and ague.

But every living cell in every plant in such an oasis depends upon the water of the spring. All the plants there form an association which can be quite well compared to a city or some other association of human beings. They do compete, for they struggle to do the most work for the good of the community, and they incidentally obtain their livelihood in the process.

Most plant societies or associations such as those which cover Great Britain are not so obviously dependent on one particular spring, but the plants composing them are associated in a very similar way.

CHAPTER II
ON SAVAGES, DOCTORS, AND PLANTS

Savages knew Botany—First lady doctors and botanical excursions—True drugs and horrible ornaments—Hydrophobia cure—Cloves—Mustard—Ivy—Roses and Teeth—How to keep hair on—How to know if a patient will recover—Curious properties of a mushroom—The Scythian lamb—Quinine: history and use—Safflower—Romance of ipecacuanha—Wars of the spice trade—Cinnamon, dogwood, and indigo—Romance of pepper—Babylonian and Egyptian botanists—Chinese discoveries—Theophrastus—Medieval times—The first illustrated book—Numbers of plants known—Discoveries of painters and poets.

IF we look back to the time when all men and women were mere savages, living like the Esquimaux or the Australians of to-day, then it is certain that every person was much interested in plants. Nothing was so interesting as daily food, because no one was ever certain of even one good meal in the day.

So that in those early times there was a very sound, well-grounded knowledge of roots, bulbs, and fruits. They knew all that were good to eat, all that could possibly be eaten in time of famine and starvation, and also every poisonous and unwholesome plant.

Some savage genius must have discovered that certain plants were "good medicine"; that certain tree-barks helped to check fever, and that others were worth trying when people had successfully devoured more than they could comfortably digest. The life of a savage meant tremendous meals, followed by days of starvation; even now, when young children are fed on rice in India, a thread is tied round their waist, and, when this bursts, they are not allowed to eat any more.

Very probably some of these early physicians were lady doctors usually of a certain age. Men were too busy with their hunting and warfare to have time to try experiments with drugs, to make concoctions of herbs all more or less disquieting and to find out if these were of any use.

So that such medicine-men or witches gradually came to understand enough about poisons or fruits to make themselves respected and even feared. They would, no doubt, make botanical excursions in the forest, accompanied by their pupils, in order to point out the poisonous and useful drugs.

It is worth noting, in passing, that this habit of botanical professors going on excursions with medical students has persisted down to our own times, probably without any break in the continuity.

But it was soon found advisable to make this knowledge secret and difficult to get. They did not really know so very much, and a mysterious, solemn manner and a quantity of horrible and unusual objects placed about the hut[4] would perhaps prevent some irate and impatient savage patient from throwing a spear at his wizard—or witch-doctor.

Shakespeare alludes to this in Macbeth. "Scale of Dragon; tooth of wolf; witches' mummy; maw and gulf of the ravin'd salt sea shark; root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark; ... gall of goat and slips of yew"; and so on.

Most of their cures were faith-cures, and they were, no doubt, much more likely to be successful when the patient believed he was being treated with some dreadful stew of all sorts of wonderful and horrible materials.

This explains how it was that the knowledge of medicine became so mixed up with pure charlatanism and swindling that no man could tell which drugs were of real use and which were mere ornaments giving piquancy and flavour to the prescription. It is not possible to say that a snake's head, the brain of a toad, the gall of a crocodile, and the whiskers of a tiger, were all of them absolutely useless. Within the last few years it has been found that an antidote to snake-bite can be obtained from a decoction of part of the snake itself, and it has also been discovered that small quantities of virulent poisons are amongst our most valuable and powerful remedies.

Whether the savages and their successors the doctors of feudal times even down to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, suspected or believed that this was the case must remain a rather doubtful hypothesis, but there is no question "that the hair of the dog that bit him" theory of medicine was very prevalent.

The following was a cure for hydrophobia of a more elaborate nature: "I learned of a Friend who had tried it effectual to cure the Biting of a Mad Dog; take the Leaves and Roots of Cowslips, of the leaves of Box and Pennyroyal of each a like quantity; shred them small to put them into Hot Broth and let it be so taken Three Days Together and apply the herbs to the bitten place with Soap and Hog's suet melted together" (Parkinson).

This prescription is not so preposterous as it sounds. Box and Pennyroyal both contain essences which would be in all probability fatal to the germ of hydrophobia, and the soap and hog's suet would keep air from the wound.

Other prescriptions read like our modern patent medicines.

"Good Cloves comfort the Brain and the Virtue of Feeling, and help also against Indigestion and Ache of the Stomach" (Bartholomew).

"Senvey" (the old name of mustard) "healeth smiting of Serpents and overcometh venom of the Scorpions and abateth Toothache and cleanseth the Hair and letteth" (that is, prevents or tends to prevent) "the falling thereof. If it be drunk fasting, it makes the Intellect good."

Even in those days the people can scarcely have believed that drinking mustard improved the intellect. Many of the remedies and cures are obviously false, for example the following:-

"A man crowned with Ivy cannot get drunk."

"Powder of dry Roses comforteth wagging Teeth that be in point to fall."

The fact that the surgeon was also a barber, and also a "face-specialist," appears from the two following:—

"Leaves of Chestnut burnt to powder and tempered with Vinegar and laid to a man's Head plaisterwise maketh Hair increase and keepeth hair from falling."

Those whose hair turned grey could employ the following prescription:—

"Leaves of Mulberry sod in rainwater maketh black hair."

If a doctor was not quite sure of the endurance of a patient under these heroic remedies, he could easily find out if he would recover, for it was only necessary to try the following:—

"Celandine with the heart of a Mouldwarp" (that is mole, Scottice moudiewort) "laid under the Heade of one that is grievouslie Sicke, if he be in danger of Death, immediately he will cry out with a loud voice or sing; if not, he will weep."

In Lightfoot's Flora Scotica, there is an interesting account of the Fly Mushroom (Agaricus muscarius) which is not very rare in Britain, and which may be easily recognized by the bright red top or cap, with whitish scales scattered over it, and a sort of ring of loose white tissue round the stalk.

"It has an acrid and deleterious quality. The inhabitants of Kamschatka prepare a liquor from an infusion of this Agaric which taken in a small quantity exhilarates the spirits, but in a larger dose brings on a trembling of the nerves, intoxication, delirium and melancholy. Linnæus informs us that flies are killed or at least stupefied by an infusion of this fungus in milk and that the expressed juice of it anointed on bedsteads and other places effectually destroys"—what we may describe as certain lively and pertinacious insects with a great affection for man!

As a matter of fact the fungus is said to be a deadly poison.[5]

These quotations are enough to show how the real medical knowledge of those times was encrusted with all sorts of faith-curing devices, sheer falsehoods, and superstitions. The most learned men of the Middle Ages were almost invariably monks and hermits, for there was nothing in the world of those strenuous times to attract a studious, sensitive disposition. The spirit of their learning can be judged from the wearisome disquisitions and lengthy volumes written about the Barnacle Goose and Scythian Lamb.

In certain deserts along the Volga River in Russia, a peculiar fern may be found. It might be described as resembling a gigantic Polypody; the stem is about as thick as a lamb's body and grows horizontally on the ground like that of the common fern mentioned; thick furry scales cover the outside of its stem, which ends at the tip in an elongated point. The blackish-green leaf-stalks springing from the furry stem end in large divided green leaves.

It occurred to some medieval humorist to cut off the upper part of the leaf-stalks, and to make a sort of toy lamb out of the four leaf-stalk stumps and part of the woolly or furry stem.

This was palmed off as a wonderful curiosity of nature, as "a plant that became an animal," upon the ingenuous tourist of the period.

Such a subject was thoroughly congenial to the learned mind in the Middle Ages, and an enormous quantity of literature was produced in consequence. The general theory is given in the following lines:—

Such is the old idea of a well-known fern, Cibotium barometz.

Yet the original researches of some African "Obi" wizard or red Indian were not forgotten, and gradually came into practice.

At last, in 1859 (on the suggestion of Dr. Royle in 1839), the adventurous journeys of Clements Markham, Spruce, and Robert Cross resulted in the introduction of the Cinchona now flourishing in Madras, Bombay, and Ceylon. In 1897 British colonies produced about £43,415 worth of quinine, and the price is now only 7-1/2d. or 8d. a pound!

Such drugs as Safflower are of very ancient date. It was commonly employed in Egypt with other dyes and spices for embalming mummies. It is now used with carbonate of soda and citric acid to give a pink dye to silks and satins, and occasionally, in the form of rouge, to ladies' cheeks! How did the ancient Egyptians discover that this particular thistle-like plant (Carthamus tinctorius) had flowers from which a red dye could be extracted by a tedious process of soaking in water? The natural colour of the flowers is not red but yellow.

The history of other drugs reads like a romance. Ipecacuanha, for instance, was discovered by some unknown Indian who lived in the damp tropical forests of Brazil and New Granada. A worthy merchant in Paris obtained a little of the drug in the way of trade. Shortly afterwards he became very ill and was attended by a certain Dr. Helvetius, who was exceedingly attentive to him. The grateful merchant gave the kind-hearted physician some ipecacuanha. In the course of time the great King Louis XIV's son fell ill of dysentery, and Helvetius received 1000 louis d'or for his ipecacuanha.

A very interesting and romantic history might be written about the effect of drugs, dyes, and spices in developing trade. During the time when Britain was struggling to obtain a share of the foreign trade of Holland and France, such spices as Clove, Cinnamon, and Pepper were of the greatest importance. The Dutch, especially, adopted every possible method to keep the spice trade in their own hands. They cut down the clove, cinnamon, and other trees, in all the islands not directly under their control. They imposed the most barbarous penalties on any interloper. For instance, any one who sold a single stick of cinnamon in Ceylon was punished with death. When the English captured the island in 1796, all such restrictions were of course repealed. Nevertheless its cultivation remained a monopoly of the East India Company until 1832.

Logwood (Haematoxylon campechianum) is closely connected with the story of adventure and colonisation in the West Indies. Its use was at first forbidden by Queen Elizabeth as it did not yield fast colours; this was because the dyers of those times did not know of any mordant to fix them. Yet this is one of the few vegetable dyes which retain their position in the market in these days of aniline colours, and it is said to be a large constituent, with brandy, of cheap "port wine."

Indigo was known to the Romans, who imported it from India on camel-back by way of the Persian and Syrian desert. In the fifteenth century, when the Dutch began to introduce it in large quantities, it was found to interfere with the "woad"[6] (Isatis tinctoria) which was then a very important cultivated plant in Europe. In Nuremberg, an oath was administered once a year to all the manufacturers and dyers, by which they bound themselves not to use the "devil's dye," as they called Indigo. Its more recent history shows a very different system. In Assam and other parts of British India, enormous sums of money have been invested in indigo plantations. It has been estimated that four million pounds was invested, and that a population of something like 700 Europeans and 850 workmen to the square mile in Behar, were entirely supported by indigo plantations.

Now all these planters are ruined and the population is dispersed, because German indigo manufactured from coal-tar is destroying the sale of the British-grown material. The plant has pretty blue flowers and belongs to the Leguminous order. The dye is obtained by steeping the leaves and young branches in water, and it is finally turned out in blue powder or cakes.

Perhaps the most interesting of all these drugs is Pepper. The Dutch, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, had a monopoly of the East Indian trade, and they tried to cut down or burn all spice trees except those in their own control. They could thus form a corner in pepper, and alter the price as they felt inclined. At one period they doubled the price, raising it from three shillings to six shillings per pound. This annoyed the London merchants so much that they met together and formed the "Society of Merchants and Adventurers trading to the East Indies." This was of course the original source of our great East Indian trade, and later on resulted in the Indian Empire.

At present, and for centuries past, the whole world is searched and explored for drugs and spices. Our medicinal rhubarb for instance, grows in China on the frontiers of Tibet; it is carried over the mountains of China to Kiaghta in Siberia, and from thence taken right across Russian Siberia to London and New York. It is closely allied to the common or garden rhubarb, which grows wild on the banks of the Volga.

It is only our duty to remember with gratitude all those long since departed botanists who have made our life so full of luxury and have supplied our doctors with all kinds of medicines.

The first doctors were of course just savage botanists, but as soon as men began to write down their experiences, we find botanical treatises. The first, and for a very long time the only, botanical books were intended to teach medical students the names and how to recognize useful flowers and drugs.

Medicinal herbs such as mandrake, garlic, and mint are found described on those clay cylinders which were used in Babylon instead of books, about 4000 B.C., that is some 6000 years ago! The Egyptians thought that "kindly, healing plants," such as opium, almonds, figs, castor-oil, dates, and olives, were derived from the "blood and tears of the gods"; that would be about 3000 B.C. It is not known how far back Chinese botany can be traced, but, by the twelfth century before Christ, some three hundred plants were known, including ginger, liquorice, rhubarb, and cinnamon.

Theophrastus, who flourished about 300 B.C., was a scientific botanist far ahead of his time. His notes about the mangroves in the Persian gulf are still of some importance. It is said that some two thousand botanical students attended his lectures.[7] It is doubtful if any professor of botany has ever since that time had so large a number of pupils. Dioscorides, who lived about 64 B.C., wrote a book which was copied by the Pliny (78 A.D.), who perished in the eruption of Vesuvius. The botany of the Middle Ages seems to have been mainly that of Theophrastus and Dioscorides. In the tenth century we find an Arab, Ibn Sina, whose name has been commemorated in the name of a plant, Avicennia, publishing the first illustrated text-book, for he gave coloured diagrams to his pupils.

After this there was exceedingly little discovery until comparatively recent times.

But Grew in 1682 and Malpighi in 1700 began to work with the microscope, and with the work of Linnæus in 1731 modern botany was well started and ready to develop.[8]

It is interesting to compare the numbers of plants known at various periods, so as to see how greatly our knowledge has been increased of recent years. Theophrastus (300 B.C.) knew about 500 plants. Pliny (78 A.D.) knew 1000 species by name. Linnæus in 1731 raised the number to 10,000. Saccardo in 1892 gives the number of plants then known as follows:—

But, during the years that have elapsed since 1892, many new species have been described, so that we may estimate that at least 200,000 species are now known to mankind.

But it is in the inner meaning and general knowledge of the life of plants that modern botany has made the most extraordinary progress. It is true that we are still burdened with medieval terminology. There are such names as "galbulus," "amphisarca," and "inferior drupaceous pseudocarps," but these are probably disappearing.

The great ideas that plants are living beings, that every detail in their structure has a meaning in their life, and that all plants are more or less distant cousins descended from a common ancestor, have had extraordinary influence in overthrowing the unintelligent pedantry so prevalent until 1875.

Yet there were many, not always botanists, of much older date, who made great discoveries in the science. Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter, seems to have had quite a definite idea of the growth of trees, for he found out that the annual rings on a tree-stem are thin on the northern and thick on the southern side of the trunk. Dante[10] seems to have also understood the effect of sunlight in ripening the vine and producing the growth of plants (Purgatorio, xxv. 77). Goethe seems to have been almost the first to understand how leaves can be changed in appearance when they are intended to act in a different way. Petals, stamens, as well as some tendrils and spines, are all modified leaves. There is also a passage in Virgil, or perhaps more distinctly in Cato, which is held to show that the ancients knew that the group of plants, Leguminosæ, in some way improved the soil. I have also tried to show that Shelley had a more or less distinct idea of the "warning" or conspicuous colours (reds, purples, spotted, and speckled) which are characteristic of many poisonous plants (see p. 238).

But if we begin with the unlettered savage, one can trace the very slow and gradual growth of the science of plant-life persisting all through the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and recent times, until about fifty or sixty years ago, when a sudden great development began, which gives us, we hope, the promise of still more wonderful discoveries.

CHAPTER III
A TREE'S PERILOUS LIFE

Hemlock spruce and pine forests—Story of a pine seedling—Its struggles and dangers—The gardener's boot—Turpentine of pines—The giant sawfly—Bark beetles—Their effect on music—Storm and strength of trees—Tall trees and long seaweeds—Eucalyptus, big trees—Age of trees—Venerable sequoias, oaks, chestnuts, and olives—Baobab and Dragontree—Rabbits as woodcutters—Fire as protection—Sacred fires—Dug-out and birch-bark canoes—Lake dwellings—Grazing animals and forest destruction—First kind of cultivation—Old forests in England and Scotland—Game preserving.

OF course the Hemlock here alluded to is not the "hemlock rank growing on the weedy bank," which the cow is adjured not to eat in Wordsworth's well-known lines. (If the animal had, however, obeyed the poet's wishes and eaten "mellow cowslips," it would probably have been seriously ill.) The "Hemlock" is the Hemlock spruce, a fine handsome tree which is common in the forests of Eastern North America.

These primeval forests of Pine and Fir and Spruce have always taken the fancy of poets. They are found covering craggy and almost inaccessible mountain valleys; even a tourist travelling by train cannot but be impressed by their sombre, gloomy monotony, by their obstinacy in growing on rocky precipices on the worst possible soil, in spite of storm and snow.

The seed itself is small and flattened. It contains both resin and food material, and is enclosed in a tough leathery skin which is carried out beyond the seed into a long, very thin, papery wing, which has very nearly the exact shape of the screw or propeller of a steamer. This wing or screw is intended to give the seed as long a flight in the air as possible before it reaches the ground. If you watch them falling from the tree, or throw one up into the air and observe it attentively, you will see that it twirls or revolves round and round exactly like the screw of a steamship. It is difficult to explain what happens without rather advanced mathematics, but it is just the reverse of what happens in the steamer.

The machinery in the steamer turns the screw, and the pressure of the water, which is thrown off, forces the boat through the water; in the case of the pineseed, the pressure of the air on the flying wings makes the seed twirl or turn round and round, and so the seed must be a much longer time in falling. They often fly to about 80 or 100 yards away from the parent tree.

Once upon the ground, the seed has to germinate if it can; its root has to pierce the soil or find a way in between crevices of rocks or sharp-edged stones. All the time it is exposed to danger from birds, beasts, and insects, which are only kept off by its resin. But it is difficult to see, for its colour is just that of dead pine needles and its shape is such that it easily slips into crevices. Then the seven or eight small green seed leaves break out of the tough seed coat, and the seedling is now a small tree two inches high. It may have to grow up through grass or bramble, or through bracken, which last is perhaps still more dangerous and difficult. It will probably be placed in a wood or plantation where hundreds of thousands of its cousins are all competing together. "In this case, the struggle for life is intense: each tree seeking for sunlight tries to push its leader-shoots up above the general mass of foliage; but all are growing in height, whilst the lateral branches which are cramped by the neighbouring trees are continually thrown off. The highest branches alone get sufficient light to remain alive, but they cannot spread out freely. They are strictly limited to a definite area; the crown is small and crowded by those of the trees next to it, and the trunk is of extraordinary length."

The above quotation from Albert Fron's Sylviculture (Paris, 1903) refers to an artificial forest cultivated and watched over by man. But the trees in such forests have "extra" dangers and difficulties to fight against. Even scientific foresters admit that they are very ignorant of what they are trying to do. In fact, the more scientific they are, the more readily they will confess how little they really know.

Watch a labourer in a nursery transplanting young pine trees; each seedling tree has a long main root which is intended to grow as straight down into the ground as it possibly can. All the other roots branch off sideways, slanting downwards, and make a most perfect though complicated absorbing system. With his large hand the man grasps a tree and lifts it to a shallow groove which he has cut in the soil. Then his very large, heavy-nailed boot comes hard down on the tender root-system. The main root, which ought to point down, points sideways or upwards or in any direction, and the beautifully arranged absorbing system is entirely spoilt. The wretched seedling has to make a whole new system of roots, and in some trees never recovers.

All sorts of animals, insects, and funguses are ready to attack our young tree. Squirrels in play will nibble off its leading shoots. Cattle will rub against its bark, and the roedeer, a very beautiful creature, and yet a destructive little fiend from the tree's point of view, nibbles the young shoots and tears the bark with its horns.

A tree's life is full of peril and danger. Yet it is most wonderfully adapted to survive them. Take a knife and cut into the bark of a pine tree, and immediately a drop of resin collects and gathers on the wound. After a short time this will harden and entirely cover the scar. Why?

There are in the woods, especially in Canada and North Russia, hundreds of insects belonging to the most different kinds, which have the habit of laying their eggs in the wood of tree-trunks. In those regions the entire country is in the winter covered with snow and ice for many months. Insects must find it difficult to live, for the ground is frozen to a depth of many feet. Where are the eggs of these insects to be stored up so that they can last through the winter without injury?

There is one insect at least, or rather many, of which the Giant Sawfly may be taken as an example, which have ingeniously solved this problem. She painfully burrows into the trunk of a tree and deposits her eggs with a store of food at the end of the burrow. A drop of resin or turpentine, which would clog her jaws, makes this a difficult task, but, as we find in many other instances, it is not impossible, but only a difficulty to conquer. If it were not for the resin, trees might be much more frequently destroyed by Sawflies than they are.

The larvæ of the Sawfly is a long, fleshy maggot. Just at the end are the strong woodcutting jaws by which it devours the wood and eats its way out as soon as it feels the genial warmth of spring penetrating through the tree-bark. Many other insects hibernate or lay their eggs in tree-trunks. Some are caterpillars of moths, such as the well-known Goat moth; others are beetles, such as one which burrows between the bark and the wood of apple trees. The mother beetle lays a series of eggs on each side of her own track. Each egg produces a grub which eats its way sideways away from the track of the mother. The track made by these grubs gets gradually wider, because the maggots themselves grow larger and more fat with the distance that they have got from their birthplace. We shall find other instances of burrowing insects when we are dealing with rubber plants.

This resin or turpentine is a very interesting and peculiar substance, or rather series of substances. It is valuable because tar, pitch, rosin, and colophony are obtained by distilling it.

When travelling through the coast forests of pine trees in the Landes of Western France, one notices great bare gashes on the stems leading round and down the trunk to a small tin cup or spout. These trees are being tapped for resin, from which rosin is manufactured. It would be difficult to find any obvious connexion between music and the Giant Sawfly. Yet the rosin used by Paganini and Kubelik has probably been developed in Conifers to keep away sawflies and other enemies. This very district, the Landes in France, was once practically a desert, and famous as such in French history. The soil was so barren that no villages or cultivation were found over the whole length of it. Now that it is planted with trees which are able to yield firewood and rosin, it is comparatively rich and prosperous.

Storms are also very dangerous for tree-life. One can only realize the beauty of a tree by watching a pine or ash in a heavy gale of wind. The swing of the branches, the swaying of the trunk, the balancing support of the roots which, buttress-like, extend out into the soil, give some idea of the extraordinary balance, toughness, and strength in trees. Except in the case of the common umbrella, which is an inefficient instrument in high wind, engineers have never attempted the solution of the problem satisfactorily solved by trees. A factory chimney only 51 feet in height will have a diameter at the base of at least three feet. This means that the height is about seventeen times its diameter. But the Ryeplant, with a diameter at base of 3 millimetres, may be 1500 mm. high! That is, the height is five hundred times its diameter, and the Ryeplant has leaves and grain to support as well as its own stem! In Pine forests on exposed mountain sides there is almost always at least a murmuring sound, which in a storm rises into weird howls and shrieks. With Greek insight and imagination, the ancients supposed that spirits were imprisoned in these suffering, straining pines. That is most beautifully expressed in The Tempest, where the dainty spirit Ariel had been painfully confined in a pine tree for a dozen years, and "his groans did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts of ever-angry bears."

One of the most interesting points in botany depends on the fact that evil conditions of any sort tend to bring about their own remedy. Endymion's spear was of "toughest ash grown on a windy site" (Keats). The prosaic chemical analyses of German botanists have, in fact, confirmed the theory there suggested, for it is found that the wood of trees grown in exposed windy places is really denser and tougher than that of others from sheltered woods.[11]

If one realizes all these dangers from insects, animals, and storms, the height to which some trees grow and the age to which they live become matters for astonishment and surprise.

The tallest trees in the world are probably certain Eucalyptus of Australia, which have obtained a height of 495 feet above the ground.

They are by no means the longest plants, for there are certain rattans or canes, climbing plants belonging to the Palm family, which may be 900 feet long, although their diameter is not more than two inches.[12] There are also certain Seaweeds in the Southern Ocean, off the coast of Chile, which attain a prodigious length of 600 feet (Macrocystis pyriferus, or "Kelp"). That is not so remarkable, for their weight is supported by other plants in the case of the rattans, and as regards the seaweeds, by the water in which they float.

The next in order to the Eucalyptus are those well-known Mammoth or Big trees of California (Sequoia gigantea). They grow only in certain valleys in the Sierra Nevada, at an altitude of 5000-8000 feet. Their height is usually given as from 250-400 feet, and the diameter sometimes exceeds thirty-five feet. Since they have become a centre of the tourist-industry in the United States, various methods have been adopted to make their size more easily realized. Thus a coach with four horses and covered by passengers is (or used to be) driven through a gateway made in one of them. The trunk of another has been cut off some feet from the ground, and a dancing-saloon has been made on the stump. It is at least doubtful if dancing would be very agreeable upon such a cross-grained sort of floor! A complete section of one of them was carried across the United States to make a dining-room table for an American millionaire. The age of one of these trees has been estimated at 3300 years. That is to say that it was a seedling in 1400 B.C., and has been peacefully growing in a Californian valley during all the time when Greece, Rome, Spain, France, Britain, and of course the United States, developed their civilizations. The specimen of the Mammoth tree in the Natural History Museum in London was 1335 years old.

The possible age of many of our common trees is much greater than any one would suppose. The "Jupiter" oak in the forest of Fontainebleau is supposed to be 700 years old. Another oak which was cut down at Bordya, in the Baltic provinces of Russia, was supposed to be about 1000 years old. Other millennial trees are or were another oak and two chestnuts: the oak grew in the Ardennes, the chestnuts still flourish, one at Sancerre (France), and the other the famous specimen on Mount Etna. There are also eight olive trees in the garden of Gethsemane at Jerusalem, which are certainly 1000 years old, and were, according to tradition, in existence in the time of Jesus Christ.

And yet all these trees are mere infants compared to Adanson's Baobab and the Dragon tree of Orotava. The celebrated traveller alluded to visited the Cape Verde islands in 1749 and found inscriptions made by English travellers on the trunk 300 years before his time. From the growth since then, he calculated that some of these trees were about 6000 years of age, and they were 27 feet in diameter.[13]

The record is held by the Dragon tree of Orotava, in the Canary Islands.

When the Spaniards landed in Teneriffe in 1402, its diameter was very nearly 42 feet. It was, however, greatly injured by a storm in 1827, and finally destroyed in 1851. (The wood was then made into walking-sticks and snuffboxes.) The age has been estimated at 10,000 years, or by other authorities at 8000 years only. The "dragon's blood" of the Canaries, a well-known remedy in the Middle Ages, was not, as is popularly supposed, derived from this tree, but was obtained from a totally different plant.

But there is a hazy tradition to the effect that the story of the Dragon which guarded the golden fruit in the island of the Hesperides was nothing but a garbled account of this redoubtable veteran of the plant world.

There is no particular advantage in growing to these enormous heights and clinging to life in this way for hundreds and thousands of years. Nature seems to have found this out and preferred the ordinary pines, oaks, and larches, which are mature in a few hundred years. In a thousand years, ten generations of larch or pine can be produced, and, as each is probably better than its predecessor, a distinct improvement in the type is possible. All these long-lived giants belong in fact to the less highly specialized orders of plants. They are like the primeval animals, the Mammoths, Atlantosauri, and Sabretoothed Tigers.

Yet when we come to think of the many and diverse perils to which trees are exposed, the existence of even these exceptional monsters seems very wonderful.

After a violent storm which had blown down many of the trees in a friend's park,[14] I visited the scene of destruction and discovered what had apparently in almost every instance produced it. Rabbits had overthrown these trees!

They had nibbled away part of the cork and part of the young wood on the projecting buttress-like roots at the base of the tree. In consequence, water, bacteria, and fungus spores had entered at the injured places, and part of the roots had become decayed and rotten. When the gale began to sway them backwards and forwards and a severe strain came on what should have been a sound anchoring or supporting buttress, the rotten part yielded, and these fine, beautiful trees fell a prey to the rabbit.

The influence of forests and timber on the daily life of mankind is a most romantic and interesting chapter in history.

Every savage tribe, every race of man, however degraded or backward, is acquainted with fire. Fuel is therefore a necessity of existence for all savages, and not merely for cooking. There is a very interesting passage in London's The Call of the Wild, when the Dog "Buck" in his dreams remembers a hairy man crouching over the fire with Buck's ancestor at his feet, whilst in the darkness all round them the firelight is reflected from eyes of wolves, bears, and even more terrible and dangerous brutes which have now happily vanished from the world. For protection at night fire was an absolute necessity. Even at that long-distant period, therefore, man had commenced to attack the forest. Unless one has had to tend a wood fire for twelve hours, it is difficult to realize what a quantity is required. To prepare fire was a long, laborious, and difficult operation; one piece of wood was placed on the ground and held in position by the toes, a pointed stick was taken between the two palms of the hand and twirled vigorously round and round until the heat was enough to ignite a piece of rotten wood placed as tinder.

Therefore smouldering branches were kept always burning, as they are to-day amongst the Fuegians and some other savages. It was a sacred duty to watch this fire, and the woman (usually old) who was entrusted with the task was very probably put to death if she failed. From this very ancient savage custom probably arose the cult of the Vestal Virgins in Ancient Rome.[15]

Another very important factor in savage life was the canoe or piroque necessary for fishing or to cross lakes and rivers. The first chantey of Rudyard Kipling has a probable theory, and is a beautiful account of how man first thought of using a floating log.[16] They hollowed out the log and "dug out" the canoe, by first lighting a fire on it and then scraping away the cinders; then the sides were pressed out, and it was trimmed and straightened to the right shape. All this was the idea of some paleolithic genius far more persevering and ingenious than any marine architect of our own days.

"Birchbark" canoes are not so common as Dug-outs. The tree, the White or Paper Birch, is found in Canada and the Northern United States; those Indians who discovered that the light, waterproof cork-bark could be fashioned into a canoe made a very great discovery, and indeed it was their canoes that made travel or exploration possible in North America.

When man began to long for a settled permanent home, it was absolutely necessary to find a way of living in safety. Wolves, bears, hyenas and other animals were abundant; neighbours of his own or other tribes were more ferocious and more dangerous than wild beasts. Some neolithic genius imagined an artificial island made of logs in the midst of a lake or inaccessible swamp. Such were the lake dwellings which persisted into historic times, and which are indeed still in existence in some parts of the earth.[17]

The trees were abundant; they could be felled by the help of fire and an axe, and the lake dwelling gave a secure defence. The wood of some of the piles supporting the great villages in Switzerland seems to be still sound, though it has been under water for many centuries. Some villages are said to have required hundreds of thousands of trees.

The forest afforded man almost everything that he used, bows and arrows, shelter, fuel, and even part of his food.

Nuts and fruits would be collected and when possible stored. In seasons of famine, they used even to eat the delicate inside portion of the bark of trees.

But as soon as the first half-civilized men began to keep cattle, sheep, and especially goats, more serious inroads still were made upon the forest. Where such animals are allowed to graze there is no chance for wood to grow (at any rate in a temperate country). The growing trees and the branches of older ones are nibbled away whilst they are young and tender. The days of the forest were nearly over when cultivation commenced. Dr. Henry describes the process of "nomadic" culture in China as follows: "They burn down areas of the forest; gather one or two crops of millet or upland rice from the rich forest soil; and then pass on to another district where they repeat the destruction."[18] A very similar process of agriculture existed until the eighteenth century in Scotland.