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Schleiden confirms the opinion of Vaupell, and adds many important observations on this subject.
Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring, pp. 39, 40. In countries somewhat further advanced in civilization than those occupied by the North American Indians, as in mediaeval Ireland, the formation of bogs may be commenced by the neglect of man to remove, from the natural channels of superficial drainage, the tops and branches of trees felled for the various purposes to which wood is applicable in his rude industry; and, when the flow of the water is thus checked, nature goes on with the processes I have already described.
Vaupell, though agreeing with other writers as to the injury done to the forest by most domestic animals and by half-tamed deer which he illustrates in an interesting way in his posthumous work, The Danish Woods thinks, nonetheless, that at the season when the mast is falling, swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of beech and oak, by treading into the ground and thus sowing beechnuts and acorns, and by destroying moles and mice.
Heyer, Das Verhalten der Waldbaume gegen Licht und Schatten, 1852. Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, 1856, i., pp. 120-200. Vaupell, De Danske Skove, 1863. Knorr, Studien uber die Buchen-Wirthschaft, 1863. Another evil, sometimes of serious magnitude, which attends the operations of the lumberman, is the injury to the banks of rivers from the practice of floating.
"A cubic foot of twigs," says Vaupell, "yields four times as much ashes as a cubic foot of stem wood. ... For every hundred weight of dried leaves carried off from a beech forest, we sacrifice a hundred and sixty cubic feet of wood. The leaves and the mosses are a substitute, not only for manure, but for ploughing.
Vaupell further observes, on the page last quoted: "The removal of leaves is injurious to the forest, not only because it retards the growth of trees, but still more because it disqualifies the soil for the production of particular species.
The birch, the larch, and the fir bear a severer climate than the oak, the oak than the beech. "These parallelisms," says Vaupell, "are very interesting, because, though they are entirely independent of each other," they all prescribe the same order of succession. Bogens Indvandring, p. 42. See alo Berg, Das Verdrangen der Laubralder im Nordlichen Deutschland, 1844.
The bogs of Denmark the examination of which by Steenstrap and Vaupell has presented such curious results with respect to the natural succession of forest trees appear to have gone through this gradual process of drying, and the birch, which grow freely in very wet soils, has contributed very effectually by its annual deposits to raise the surface above the water level, and thus to prepare the ground for the oak.
"Mediaeval Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red horsehoof whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves comfrey and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other dwellings in the Middle Ages." Introduction of Foreign Plants.
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