IT too often happens in these latter days that a suggestive name proves sadly disappointing. We look in vain for the attractive features the mind pictured, and have good cause to criticise the unbridled imagination of forerunning visitors. Fortunately, a recent ramble had no such painful ending. I had heard of a wild-wood, and since have found it.

Clustered trees, though there be many, do not of themselves make a forest. Many a woodland tract is as uniform as a cornfield, or, at best, but indefinite duplication of the trees along a village street. If the rambler merely seeks the shade, then one tree is sufficient, and perhaps an umbrella is even an improvement, seeing we can plant it where we choose. But now I had found a wildwood in the fullest sense of that suggestive phrase. Here variety ruled, and only the choicest of Nature's handiwork had foothold. Think of it! Century after century Nature had had full sway, and turned out a finished piece of work. Every sense is charmed; eye, ear, and nose are alike regaled; the sense of touch delighted. Perfect trees to look upon; the birds' songs and the moaning of the sea to hear; the bloom of a thousand roses to smell; the carpeted sand to lie upon. Yet, where all was nearing perfection, there stood out one grand feature overtopping all else, — scores of magnificent hollies. I had seen many of these trees before, but never where they gave a distinct character to the woods. Elsewhere they occur in clumps of three or four, or perhaps a dozen, but here, on an island by the sea, there are hundreds. One that I measured was sixty-eight inches in circumference and forty feet high. The pale-gray trunk was well mottled with curious black lichen, and among the branches drooped long tresses of beard-like lichen. The pathless wood about it was a most fit surrounding, the abundant birds its appropriate comrades, the murmur of the sea the music to which its branches gently swayed. To be able to throw oneself on a moss-carpeted sand dune and gaze upward at such a tree is abundant recompense for miles of weary walking.

But this little nook was not the whole wildwood, and every tree was worthy of description. I would that I could write the history of a tree: the stories of these hollies would pass for fairy tales.

Irregularities in tree-growth are nowhere unusual features of a forest, but here the hollies are, or have been, on the lookout to break away from all restraint and become as wayward as possible. Here is one that has twirled about until now the trunk is a gigantic corkscrew; and not far off, another and larger tree has branched some ten feet from the ground, and then the two main divisions of the trunk have been reunited. A modification of this, where a stout limb has returned to the parent stem and re-entered, making "jug-handles," is a common occurrence, and, more marvellous still, a venerable cedar has some of its outreaching branches passing not merely into, but entirely through huge hollies that stand near by. Evidently the cedar here is the older tree and the hollies have grown around the now imprisoned branches. And, as if not content with such irregularities as these, other hollies have assumed even animal-like shapes; the resemblance in one instance to an elephant's head and trunk being very marked. Even the stately and proper-grown hollies have their trunks incased in strangely wrinkled barks, suggestive of a plastic mass that has suddenly hardened.

Why all this irregularity I leave to others. There was no patent explanation for him who ran to read, and I was puzzled at the outset to know in what direction to commence guessing. This is an entertainment, when idling in the woods, the rambler should not despise. Our best outings are when we wear other head-gear than a thinking-cap. So far as the crooked hollies are concerned, it will be time enough next winter to muse over the conclusions of the botanist.

Equally startling in such wonderland is it to see a thrifty blueberry bush growing from the trunk of a tree, so high in the air that you need a ladder to reach it. This bush annually bears a full crop of excellent fruit. That I am at last in a bit of Jersey's primeval forest there is little doubt. Had an elk darted by, or a mastodon screamed, it would hardly have been surprising. This not seriously, of course; but how promptly the present vanishes in such a wood; how vividly the past is pictured before us! Everywhere towering trees bearing evidence of age, and early in the day I found myself face to face with a huge cedar, dating back at least to the Norsemen, who it is thought reached America, if not the New England coast. Here was a tree that for centuries the Indians had known as a landmark.

It is a mistake to suppose that old trees do not remain in almost every neighborhood, for an old tree is not of necessity a big one. A dwarf will wrinkle and crook as surely as a giant. In many a swamp there are gnarly hornbeams that date back at least two centuries, and grape-vines are known that are even older. It is common to consider as old every object that has rounded out a single century, but this is nothing uncommon in tree-growths, and even some shrubs. Many a wild growth, if undisturbed, becomes practically permanent, and I am positive any number of insignificant growths in the undrained swamps and plough-defying meadows date back to Penn's treaty, and even earlier. There is a familiar lilac hedge, or part of it, within the bounds of my ordinary rambles, planted by my grandfather in 1804, and so, in a dozen years, will be a hundred years old; but it looks nothing different from similar hedges planted fifty years ago. The old cedar in the lane was but eighteen inches in diameter, and I have documentary evidence that it was a familiar landmark much more than a century ago. A thunderbolt or tornado recently shivered the old tree beyond recognition, literally reduced it to splinters, and I found that the heart was very much decayed. There was no possibility of determining the age by counting the rings of growth shown in a cross section, and so I have but the poor satisfaction of merely conjecturing. At one place a narrow bit of the outer edge was smooth, and I counted forty-eight rings, one for each year of my life, and these had added but little to the tree's girth.

But here, at Wildwood Beach, is a cedar almost twelve feet in circumference, — considerably more than double that of the cedar in the lane. There is no reason to consider that its growth has been forced by peculiarly favorable conditions. It is simply a magnificent example of what a tree may become if a fair chance is shown it. I have suggested that the tree may be nearly or quite one thousand years old, and I believe it. Peter Kalm, when wandering in the Jersey wilderness in 1749, noticed the cedars carefully, and mentions the fact of “very slow growth; for a stem thirteen inches and a quarter in diameter had one hundred and eighty-eight rings, or annual circles, and another, eighteen inches in diameter, had at least two hundred and fifty, for a great number of the rings were so fine that they could not be counted."

Of course, much of the beauty of this huge, lone, sea-side cedar is lost in being so hemmed in by other growths, and it is a startling fact that, if the rambler was not very open-eyed, he might pass it by unheeded. Think of what wealth of wonders are in every wood, and that so few persons find them: what a staggering array of marvels in a forest laid bare!

I would that Kalm, whom I have just quoted, had taken in the Jersey coast as well as Jersey inland. He would have found more to praise and less to criticise. His remark, "the rattlesnakes, horned snakes, red-bellied, green, and other poisonous snakes . . . are in great plenty here," would never have been written of the coast, and, in truth, did not apply to the Delaware valley, where he wrote the above. In all probability rattlers were never very numerous, the horned snake is a myth, and all others harmless. And to all these demerits of dear Jersey, Kalm adds another: “To these I must add," he writes, “the wood-lice, with which the forests are so pestered that it is impossible to pass through a bush without having a whole army of them on your clothes, or to sit down, though the place be ever so pleasant." While in much, to my mind, the world has moved backward, it has improved in this. I have passed through many bushes, and sat down often, but never with so inconvenient a result.

Why this luxuriant vegetation on a sandy island by the sea? The soil suggests barrenness only. Except the faint traces of decayed vegetation, it is a matter of pure white sand. It is known that the land along the Jersey coast is sinking, and we naturally look for a stratum of loam, once well above but now below or at the level of the sea. This, in our fancy, we hold necessary for timber growth; but if it is here at all, these trees' roots have not reached it. It is strange that such huge growths can find safe anchorage in these light and shifting sands. They have found some strength in union and close companionship, it is true; but, though they are built on a sandy foundation, the storms have not prevailed to their detriment even. Whence the trees' nourishment? Largely from the atmosphere: but why speculate? Suffice it to say, that, were we to take these same trees and shrubs inland and set them in pure silica, though Paul planted and Apollos watered never so carefully, there would be no increase.

The undergrowth, too, is everywhere equally luxuriant and gives a semi-tropical appearance to the landscape, this feature being emphasized by the vigor of vine growths that bind together the tallest trees and unite many an oak, cedar, and holly standing scores of feet apart. We are forced to smile nowadays when we read the glowing accounts of America's earliest visitors, and wonder how it was possible that they should have been so deceived; but the truth dawns upon me when I recall these early writers and see the wondrous conditions obtaining on this sea- side island. The least that can be truthfully said is rather a description of Florida than of New Jersey, and would give no true idea of the State as a whole.

This little island, I take it, is a relic of old New Jersey: this forest a living fragment of that now buried one, not far away, which has “given rise to a singular industry, the literal mining of timber. At several points... enormous quantities of white cedar, liquidambar, and magnolia logs, sound and fit for use, are found submerged in the salt marshes, sometimes so near the surface that roots and branches protrude, and again deeply covered with smooth meadow sod. Many of the trees overthrown and buried were forest giants. In the great cedar swamp... the logs reach a diameter of four, five, and even seven feet, and average between two and three feet in thickness."

In one case, one thousand and eighty rings of annual growth have been counted; and under this huge stump was discovered a prostrate tree, which had fallen and been buried before the larger one had sprouted. This lower-lying log was determined to be fully five hundred years old. Here, then, is evidence of fifteen centuries that have elapsed, and forests even before then had grown, flourished,, and decayed. It is a series of surprises to dig into such strange earth. Think of passing through an underground cedar swamp and coming upon magnolias and sweet-gum still deeper down! What if there were tongues in such trees? Here is a spot whereat a poet might dwell to his and the world's advantage. Not all the grandeur of the world centres in the sea or rests upon a mountain. There are other beauties than those of a spreading landscape or a rocky gorge; a strange, peculiar beauty, worthy of a poet, clings to every trunk and broken branch of this sunken sea-side forest.

When we consider that for miles at sea, as we stand upon the present beach, we are looking upon waters that cover what was once, and not so very long ago, dry and habitable land, we can better realize the one-time conditions of this region when primitive man threaded the mazes of the primeval forest. Dr. Lockwood has told us of masses of peat and vegetable growth cast ashore during storms, and of a mastodon tooth that had long been buried in a swamp, and yet came from the bottom of the sea, waves breaking now where but a few centuries ago a forest had withstood the tempest's fury. Was man here then? How constantly this question comes to mind when we recall the past! One cannot reasonably doubt it, and it never would have been a debatable matter had not ignorance declared man's recent creation, and that our continent's quota of humanity had to force the ice-barriers of Siberia and Behring's Strait, and so finally reach the Atlantic coast of America. Happily, such nonsense is forever downed.

While, the island over, I found not even an arrow-head, yet other traces of early man were not wanting; traces contemporaneous with the buried swamps at sea and hidden forests on the mainland. I refer to submerged shell-heaps. These are now a feature of the marshes, and would be puzzles, indeed, were it not that they rest upon hard-pan, and so were started upon what was then dry land. Now, the marsh has grown about them to a depth of several feet, and not far from the dark holly forest, wherein I am now resting, there is a long, narrow deposit of broken and burnt shells that is not exposed even at low tide. One need not fear that his fancy will run riot in picturing that early time when the broad marsh and shallow bay were scenes of human industry of a most primitive kind. While the gathering of shell-fish, for both immediate and future needs, was kept up by the Indians into historic times, it must not be concluded that the remains of their feasting are all comparatively modern and offer no differences among themselves.

These Indian shell heaps or “kitchen-middens" vary considerably in one particular, some containing traces of Indian art in its highest development; others have little else than a few broken and battered stone hammers. This might be explained if there was no evidence of antiquity of a geological character; but this exists, and a very superficial tabulation of these shell-heaps, scattered over a few square miles of territory, showed that those most deeply buried in the marshes contained no pottery or evidence of skilfully-worked stone, while those that are still above the water-level do contain elaborately-wrought implements. Further, here, as .elsewhere, I doubt not, if careful sections of the most extensive of these shell deposits could be made, their bases would show a lower stage of primitive art than is found near their surfaces. And what of the shell-heaps that have been washed away? Thousands of acres of habitable land have been engulfed. If this was forested, as is the little island over which I now wander, what a paradise for primitive man!

To turn aside, when a wonderful forest is at hand, and the ocean not a mile away, to consider Nature's commonplaces, may startle or even disgust; but for me there is a never-ending charm in the meandering meadow-mice that I cannot withstand. I found them on the margin of the marshes, lively as ever on the home-pastures, but here, how big, noisy, and rusty-coated they are! I scarcely knew them as bay-side dwellers; yet the most inveterate species-monger would hardly say they were not the same. They seemed to be considerably more aquatic, and when they stood erect and squeaked shrilly, they recalled the shy woodchucks when raiding a field of clover. It is safe to presume that the superabundance of food has to do with their plumpness, and possibly the brine has reddened their fur. What do they eat? I had no means of determining, for every one kept beyond my reach, and possibly dissection of a dozen victims would have thrown no light on the subject. To question the old baymen was a loss of time. As if they had nothing to do but look after mice. At last, however, I got this piece of information, if it was not an attempt to humbug. He said, “They go crabbin' on the ma'sh at low tide." Whether this means that they are on the mud-flats at that time, and so associated with certain Crustacea, or are really in pursuit of them, others must determine. Not one — and I saw several — went crabbing while I lingered on the “ma'sh." There were spidery crabs enough to feed all the mice in Jersey, and all the world knows these rodents are carnivorous as cats, in spite of their teeth. I have never had a caged mouse or squirrel that had not a pronounced fondness for meat, and the fresher and bloodier the better.

In early summer there is one source of animal food in abundance: the eggs and newly-hatched young of the clapper-rails. These birds are phenomenally abundant now, their kek-kek-kek rattling over the meadows until the whole marsh trembles. That mice feast upon their eggs seems to me the more probable, because in the mucky meadow at home the king-rail has the same creature to contend with. Is it safe upon such data to come to any conclusion? I have never seen a mouse with a mud-hen's egg, but I have found this same animal rioting in a king-rail's nest, and so infer as stated.

It is among the marvels of nature that any bird should nest upon the ground; their commonsense should warn them, but does not. Probably in a wide marsh of a thousand acres or more the clapper-rails or mud-hens are comparatively safe; but not so in the upland mucky meadows. I have king-rails every year nesting at my elbow, as it were, and every year suffering from mice, minks, and snapping-turtles. How many generations are needed to bring about an inherited suspicion of such exposed places? That beautiful bird, the least bittern, too, will make a nest where every cow can brush it with its tail or trample it to pieces; and yet, in spite of all possible dangers, the young reach maturity and in due season repeat their parents' blunders.

The sea-side and the upland marshes had other features in common: there were plenty of tuneful sparrows. Their voices were not the same, but so far alike that I had but to shut my eyes when the sea-side finches sang and hear the sweet ripple of song that quivers above the meadows at home. Could I not do this, travel would have no pleasure.

The raccoon, I was told, is another lover of the marsh, and dweller in the thick-set holly woods. I saw none, very naturally, because they are too wise to brave the daylight, and only the equipped hunter is likely to meet with them at night. Still, they are known to be abundant. That they go crabbing is beyond question; and again comes up a comparison with the meadows at home. I have had recent convincing evidence that the raccoon is fond of crayfish, and not only knocks down the towers, but digs out the tunnel-nest of the mud-dwelling Cambarus diogenes. Occasionally, it would seem, the raccoon ventures abroad before sundown. I was told of one that started from the mainland in broad daylight, but did not reach the holly forest. Wide-awake gulls spied him and reported his presence. They darted upon him as he crouched in the grass, and severely nipped him with their cruel beaks, time and again. Finally, a fisherman, seeing the commotion, hurried to the spot and divided the spoils with the gulls, keeping the lion's share.

“As the sands of the sea: “how often we hear it! and it is one of a few expressions equal to all occasions. Here were attractions equally as numerous, and every one worthy of our whole attention. But the day was drawing to a close, and I had the long shadows in mind that dimmed the sun's glare upon the beach. Across lots through the woods was but a step, and in all its summer glory glittered the broad Atlantic. What a quick transition! Here, literally joining hands, a sea-side forest and the boundless ocean.