thought files

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less." 

“Every one [sic] has heard that when an American forest is cut down, a very different vegetation springs up; but it has been observed that ancient Indian ruins in the Southern United States, which must formerly have been cleared of trees, now display the same beautiful diversity and proportions of kinds as in the surrounding virgin forests. What a struggle must have gone on during the long centuries between the several kinds of trees, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; what war between insect and insect – between insects, snails and other animals with birds and beasts of prey – all striving to increase, all feeding on each other, or on the trees, their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees.”