swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither
artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the
appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The
latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and
the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced
for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted
in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and
growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either
the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of
growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions
favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack
swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone,
nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when
the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as
all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees.
Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in
all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of
the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act
of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the
Bible genesis nowhere affirms.

Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of
Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the
dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of
the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is
evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest
growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the
"seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly
stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All
the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible