We live in a latitude and upon a soil, therefore, which are favorable
to the harmonious grouping of vegetation. As we proceed southward, we
witness a constant increase of the number of species gathered together
in a single group. Nature is more addicted at the North to the habit of
classifying her productions and of assembling them in uniform phalanxes.
The painter, on this account, finds more to interest the eye and to
employ his pencil in the picturesque regions of frost and snow; while
the botanist finds more to exercise his observation in the crowded
variety that marks the region of perpetual summer.

But while vegetation is more generally social in high latitudes, several
families of Northern trees are entirely wanting in this quality. Seldom
is a forest composed chiefly of Elms, Locusts, or Willows. Oaks and
Birches are associated in forests, Elms in groves, and Willows in small
groups following the courses of streams. Those Northern trees which are
most eminently social, including the two just named, are the Beech, the
Maple, the Hickory, the coniferous trees, and some others; and by the
predominance of any one kind the character of the soil may be partially
determined. There is no tree that grows so abundantly in miry land,
both North and South upon this continent, as the Red Maple. It occupies
immense tracts of morass in the Middle States, and is the last tree
which is found in swamps, according to Michaux, as the Birch is the last
we meet in ascending mountains. The Sugar-Maple is confined mostly to
the Northeastern parts of the continent. Poplars are not generally
associated exclusively in forests; but at the point where the Ohio
and the Mississippi mingle their waters are grand forests of Deltoid
Poplars, that stamp upon the features of that region a very peculiar
physiognomy.

The characteristics of different woods, composed chiefly of one family