Reached the level of the rocks,
Admired the stretching world,
Nor feared the wandering flocks.

But at this tender age
Its sufferings began;
There came a browsing ox
And cut it down a span.

This time, perhaps, the ox does not notice it amid the grass; but
the next year, when it has grown more stout, he recognizes it for a
fellow-emigrant from the old country, the flavor of whose leaves and
twigs he well knows; and though at first he pauses to welcome it, and
express his surprise, and gets for answer, "The same cause that brought
you here brought me," he nevertheless browses it again, reflecting, it
may be, that he has some title to it.

Thus cut down annually, it does not despair; but, putting forth two
short twigs for every one cut off, it spreads out low along the ground
in the hollows or between the rocks, growing more stout and scrubby,
until it forms, not a tree as yet, but a little pyramidal, stiff, twiggy
mass, almost as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest
and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on
account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their
thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the
scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on
the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend with, than
anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to
defend themselves against such foes. In their thorniness, however, there
is no malice, only some malic acid.