genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies
locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in
his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at
conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.

He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of
practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the
philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a
rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated
fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by
adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded
by an oak forest, _where there were a few oaks previously scattered
through the woods to furnish seed._" This is a very cautious, as well as
circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made, had
his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz, Professor
Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously scattered through
the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical considerations" taken into
account by him, as a philosophical botanist rather than a practical one.
They were necessary for the extreme caution with which he would state a
proposition when its "conditioning facts" were not fully known by him. His
anxiety to account for the appearance of an oak forest in the place of a
pine, where the latter had been cut off, was commendable enough to justify
him in a pretty broad supposition, but not in any such general statement
as he here makes. Had he consulted any of the older inhabitants of
Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his own state, he would have
found that not a few oak forests had succeeded the pine without the
intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered acorns, in the
localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of distribution have
been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in localties where the
shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white oak itself. No