n seven ages; and it
needs no Maeterlinck, or Haeckel, to trace the similarity between the
seven ages. Seedling, sapling, large sapling, pole, large pole, standard
and set--marking the ages of the trees--all have their prototypes in the
human. The seedling can grow only under the protecting nursery of earth,
air, moisture and in some cases the shade of other trees. The young
conifers, for instance, grow best under the protecting nursery of
poplars and cottonwoods, as one sees where the fire has run, and the
quick growers are already shading the shy evergreens. And there is the
same infant mortality among the young trees as in human life. Too much
shade, fire, drought, passing hoof, disease, blight, weeds out the
weaklings up to adolescence. Then, the real business of living
begins--it is a struggle, a race, a constant contention for the top, for
the sunlight and air and peace at the top; and many a grand old tree
reaches the top only when ripe for death. Others live on their three
score years and ten, their centuries, and in the case of the sugar pines
and sequoias, their decades of centuries. First comes the self-pruning,
the branches shaded by their neighbors dying and dropping off. And what
a threshing of arms, of strength against strength, there is in the storm
wind, every wrench tightening grip, to the rocks, some trees even
sending down extra roots like guy ropes for anchorhold. The tree
uncrowded by its fellows shoots up straight as a mast pole, whorl on
whorl of its branches spelling its years in a century census. It is the
crowded trees that show their almost human craft, their instinct of will
to live--cork-screwing sidewise for light, forking into two branches
where one branch is broken or shaded, twisting and bending, ever seeking
the light, and spreading out only when they reach room for shoulder
swing at the top, with such a mechanism of pumping machinery to hoist
barrels of water up from secret springs in the earth as man has not
devised for his own use. And now, when the crown has widened out to sun
and air, it stops growing and bears its seeds--seeds shaped like
parachutes and canoes and sails and wings, to overcome the law of its
own fixity--life striving to surpass itself, as the symbolists and the
scientists say, though symbolist and scientist would break each other's
heads if you suggested that they both preach the very same thing.

And a lost tree is like a lost life; utter loss, bootless waste. You