RIP VAN WINKLES OF THE WOODS.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 July 1924, Page 4

RIP VAN WINKLES OF THE WOODS.

■'They havi- cut down our beautiful beech wood,” lamented a friend. "Hut there is olio compensation. In•stead, wo have a fairyland of blueliolls,” savs 1,. K, H:ttnsc-v in tlit? Haile .Mail!”

It is a luatlor of oomuion exponent e that when woods are out down flower.appear that were novel-—in the memory of those who nu,;ht to know and notice—seen there before.

What happens- Who plants them? ’Hie answer is that they were there all the tini", wait iup the eali to life. In a wood there is a Keen strttpple for exist onto that is hardly paralleled in human competition. It i~ c-hiofiy a strupple for lipht. The denser the foliape the less iipht filters tlirouph. And without lipht the sleeper cannot wake. In a wood of elm and oak, the unc!t lerci'. l!i was of hraeken that prow lireast hiph in autumn. Its "old and ora.npe aild voilow led the children io call it the I'airies’ Woncl. In sprinp the younp preen Intel to push its way llic ciupli the densely packed old I rends. Year alter year this happened, til! one autumn there was a shortage ot straw, and the hraeken was * ui down tor boddinp the cm tie. When I v i-i tod the wood next .May it wa.- til - Kairies- Wood ill Until. As far as live eye could see. stretched a sheet of heavenly Idtte. The sleepers had naked. A Canadian In -ml tells me ol a i> uelv mountain trail, where fen- miles stretches the- forest piimeval. ’fall white-, pi lit-toner overhead. Ifeneatii pine-, as heneath heeeh trees, practically iiolliinp will prow. The accumulatii."! of pine needles, lor one thinp, kc-ctis out all lipht. On the top of a mountain, a cleanup was made. ’! lie next time i hoy passed that way. the site of a tire was marked he a natch of while clover. This iuevitalily happens wherever trees are out down. Oil all sides stretch the forest. Where did the white c-lovor come I ruin ? Where "as it when those iniphty tree- were lo"'-c-rinp overhead:It was insi asleep. Perhaps the clover seed had slept beneath the pineneedles. Ini lied deep in the soil, lor a hundred years— perhaps even lonp-r. In Nature there are lonp, lonp sleeps. I Cut always, so me day. there it an aWiikoitinp.