forest primeval

English

Noun

forest primeval (plural forests primeval)

1. (dated, obsolete, uncommon) Alternative form of primeval forest
   • 1847, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie:

     This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks / Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight.

   • 1866, Albert Deane Richardson, Our New States and Territories, Being Notes of a Recent Tour of Observation Through Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Montana, Washington Territory and California, page 63:

     Here is the forest primeval, thick with slender pine, fir, hemlock, spruce, cedar and arbor vitæ, the trunks gloved in moss of orange-green, the branches hung with brown Spanish moss, the ground white, yellow, and purple with luxuriant flowers.

   • 1892, California, State Board of Forestry, Fourth Biennial Report of the California State Board of Forestry for the Years 1891-92, page 62:

     The "forest primeval" is our most valuable inheritance. It is the ready cash of nature's bountiful provision for our future.

   • 1928, Pennsylvania. Dept. of Forests and Waters, Bulletin, Volume 31, page 3:

     It is in these small remnants of the forests primeval, usually located in remote forest regions, that one finds the most delightful resting places and the choicest beauty spots within the Key-stone State.

   • 1953, Chet Schwarzkopf, “Rotary Grove”, in The Rotarian‎^[1], volume 83, number 5, page 30:

     Here tower redwood trees which knew Earth before the Shepherd's Star, were forests primeval at the time of the Crusades, and were finishing a generation of centuries ere Columbus landed ... the oldest living things.

   • 1986, United States, Congress, House, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Public Lands, Management of the Tongass National Forest, Oversight Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Public Lands of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-ninth Congress, Second Session, on Management of the Tongass National Forest, Hearings Held in Washington, DC, May 8 and 9, 1986, page 410:

     Increasingly, people across the nation are seeking out this last expanse of the forest primeval, a land of Sitka spruce and western hemlock over 400 years old that tower over all that walks below.