<h2><SPAN name="TREES" id="TREES"></SPAN>TREES.</h2>
<p class="ac">W. E. WATT.</p>
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<div class="verse">Woodman, spare that tree!</div>
<div class="verse indent-1_5">Touch not a single bough!</div>
<div class="verse">In youth it sheltered me,</div>
<div class="verse indent-1_5">And I'll protect it now.</div>
<div class="verse ar">—<i>Morris.</i></div>
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<div class="verse">The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,</div>
<div class="verse">Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;</div>
<div class="verse">Three centuries he grows, and three he stays</div>
<div class="verse">Supreme in state; and in three more decays.</div>
<div class="verse ar">—<i>Dryden.</i></div>
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<p>SUNLIGHT and moisture fall
upon the earth and find it full
of germs of life. At once
growths begin each after its
own kind. There is such a multitude
of them that they have not yet been
counted. Each locality has forms peculiar
to itself. The places most
abundantly watered have different
forms from those less favored by rain
and dew, and those receiving more
heat and sun allow more luxuriant
growths than others if the water supply
is large.</p>
<p>The business of life and growth is
mostly carried on by means of water
set in motion and sustained by heat.
Those forms of life which reach highest
above the surface of the earth are
called trees. They are always striving
to see what heights they can attain.
But the different forms of life have
limits set them which they cannot pass.
The structure of one tree is limited to
carrying its top twenty feet from the
ground, that of another is so favored
that it can reach twice that height, and
others tower high above us and stand
for centuries.</p>
<p>But the same tree does not flourish
with the same vigor in different places.
The nourishment of the soil may favor
it or poverty dwarf its growth. Moisture
and heat must be supplied or the
growth will be slight.</p>
<p>I have stood upon the thick tops of
cedar trees on high places in the White
mountains near the tree-line. Towards
the summit the trees diminish in size
until they become veritable dwarfs.
They are stunted by the cold. They
shrink aside or downward trying to
find shelter from the angry winds that
are so cutting. Diminutive tree trunks
are found that have curled themselves
into sheltering crannies of rock and
grown into such distorted shapes that
they are gathered as curiosities.</p>
<p>The last trees to give up the fight on
Mount Adams are the cedars of which
I speak. They hug the rock for the
little warmth that may be lurking
there in remembrance of the sun's
kindly rays; they mat themselves together
and interlock their branches so
as to form a springy covering to the
whole ground. One may lie down
upon their tops as upon a piece of upholstery,
and in the openings below are
rabbits and woodchucks and sometimes
bears safely hidden from the view of
the hunter.</p>
<p>From these ground-hugging trees of
the mountain-tops to the great redwoods
of our western slopes the mind
passes the entire range of tree life.
No trees are so great as our redwoods,
though in Australia the eucalyptus
reaches higher with a comparatively
slender trunk. Where the forests are
thickest, and the growth of the trees
consequently tallest, the eucalyptus
towers sometimes four or five hundred
feet towards the sky.</p>
<p>The shrinking of mountain trees
where the rock affords some warmth
and shelter is shown on a larger scale
in the forms of trees that stand at the
edge of a forest. Where a stream divides
the forest we find the trees upon
the bank reaching out their branches
and spreading luxuriant foliage over
the water, because the open air in that
direction helps the growth of leaves
and twigs. Shade trees by the road-side
reach out towards the open space
of the road and grow one-sided because
the conditions of light and air are better
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</SPAN></span>
over the road than against the buildings
or other trees that are behind them.</p>
<p>The prevailing winds of any country
bend the trees largely in one direction.
In the vicinity of Chicago, where the
return trade winds blow day after day
from the southwest, we find the willows
of the prairie all bending their heads
gracefully to the northeast.</p>
<p>The relations between trees and the
fertility of the country around them is
a matter of deep interest to man. Portions
of France have been productive
and afterwards barren because of the
abundance of the trees at first and their
having afterwards been cut down to
supply the wants of man, who desired
their material and the ground on which
they stood. The rivers of Michigan
are not navigable now in some instances
where once they were deep
with water. The destruction of the
forests to supply the lumber and furniture
markets of the world has caused
less rain to fall, and the snows of winter
which formerly lay late in spring
beneath the forests now melt at the return
of the sun in the early months and
are swept with the rush of high water
away to the great lakes. Many of the
barren wastes in Palestine and other
countries, which in olden times blossomed
as the rose, have lost their glory
with the destruction of their trees.</p>
<p>Men have learned something of the
value of the trees to a fertile country
and the science of forestry has arisen,
not only to determine the means of
growing beautiful and useful trees, but
also to court the winds of heaven to
drop their fatness upon the soil. In
the state of Nebraska 800,000,000
planted trees invite the rain and the
state is blessed by the response.</p>
<p>Man used to worship the forest. The
stillness and the solemn sounds of the
deep woods are uplifting to the soul
and healing to the mind. The great
gray trunks bearing heavenward their
wealth of foliage, the swaying of
branches in the breeze, the golden
shafts of sunlight that shoot down
through the noonday twilight, all tend
to rest the mind from the things of
human life and lift the thoughts to
things divine.</p>
<p>The highest form of architecture practiced
on earth is the Gothic, which holy
men devised from contemplation of
the lofty archings of trees and perpetuated
in the stone buildings erected to
God in western Europe through the
centuries clustering around the thirteenth.</p>
<p>Trees afford hiding and nesting
places for many birds and animals.
Their cooling shelter comforts the cattle;
they furnish coursing-places among
their branches for the sportive climbing-animals,
and their tender twigs give
restful delight to the little birds far out
of reach of any foe.</p>
<p>Man has always used the trees for
house building; his warmth is largely
supplied from fires of wood and leaves;
from the days when Adam and Eve did
their first tailoring with fig leaves, the
trees have been levied upon for articles
of clothing till now the world is supplied
with hats of wood, millions of
buttons of the same material are worn,
and the wooden shoes of the peasantry
of Europe clump gratefully over the
ground in acknowledgment of the debt
of mankind to the woods.</p>
<p>Weapons of all sorts, in all ages, have
been largely of wood. Houses, furniture,
troughs, spoons, bowls, plows, and
all sorts of implements for making a
living have been fashioned by man
from timber. Every sort of carriage
man ever devised, whether for land or
water travel, depended in its origin
upon the willing material the trees have
offered. Although we now have
learned to plow the seas with prow of
steel and ride the horseless carriage
that has little or no wood about it, yet
the very perfection of these has arisen
from the employment of wood in countless
experiments before the metal thing
was invented.</p>
<p>Our daily paper is printed from the
successors of Gutenberg's wooden type,
upon what seems to be paper, but is in
reality the ground-up and whitened
pulp of our forest trees. Our food is
largely of nuts and fruits presented
us by the trees of all climes, which are
yet brought to our doors in many instances
by wooden sailing-vessels,
whose sails are spread on spars from
our northern forests.</p>
<p>The baskets of the white man and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</SPAN></span>
the red Indian are made from the materials
of the forest. Ash strips are
pounded skillfully and readily separate
themselves in flat strips suitable
for weaving into receptacles for carrying
the berries of the forest shades or
the products of the soil, whose richness
came by reason of the long-standing
forests which stood above it and
fell into it for centuries.</p>
<p>Whoever has tried to stopper a
bottle when no cork was at hand knows
something of the value of one sort of
trees. He who has lain upon a bed of
fever without access to quinine knows
more of the debt we owe the generous
forests that invite us with their cooling
branches and their carpeted, mossy
floors. The uses of rubber to city people
are almost enough to induce one
to remove his hat in reverence to the
rubber tree; the esteem we have for
the products of the sugar maple and
the various products of the pine in
their common forms of tar, pitch, and
turpentine, as well as in their subtler
forms, which are so essential to the
arts and sciences, contributing to our
ease, comfort, and elegance, should
cause us to cherish the lofty pine and
the giant maple with warmest gratitude.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most refined of the
pleasures of man is found in the playing
of musical instruments. There is
not one of the sweeter-toned of all the
vast family of musical instruments that
is not dependent on the sympathetic
qualities of the various woods. The
violin shows the soul of this material
in its highest refinement. No other
instrument has so effectually caught
the tones of the glorious mountain and
the peaceful valley as has the choicely
selected and deftly fashioned shell of
the fiddle. It awakens all the fancies
of a lifetime in one short hour, it
brings gladness to the heart and enlivens
the whole frame, and when the
master hand brings out from its delicate
form the deeper secrets of its nature
the violin brings tears to our eyes
and inspires within us an earnestness
of purpose which is a perpetual tribute
of the soul of man to the heart of the
forest.</p>
<p>I took a spring journey once from
the heart of old Kentucky through
some of the northern states around to
the eastward to Virginia. The dogwood
was in blossom south of the
Ohio. The forests and hillsides were
set forth here and there in bridal array
by the glad whiteness of myriads of
these delicate flowers. Through Ohio
and Indiana the peach trees were putting
forth their delicate pink blossoms
that sought us out in the cars and delighted
us with their rare fragrance.
In Pennsylvania we passed out of the
peach region, and I thought the mountains
could not give flowers to match
the loveliness experienced on the two
preceding days, but when we were
running adown the "blue Juniata river"
there burst upon me the purple radiance
of the ironwood that I had entirely
forgotten as a flowering tree of
beauty. Brighter than the peach and
softer than the dogwood it stood out
against the foliage of the stream and hillside.
It followed the railway all down
the Susquehanna across the line into
Maryland, and gave me joy until it was
lost again as the warmth of the southern
sun poured itself again before my
eyes upon the purity and simplicity of
the snowy dogwood.</p>
<p>And in the fall I once passed through
the hills of New York and Massachusetts.
It was Thanksgiving Day. The
matchless American forests were then
in their greatest glory. Every hill
seemed to have brought out its choicest
holiday garment and was calling for
admiration. So richly blended are the
reds, the yellows, and the greens that
one cannot see how people can do
business with such delights for the eye
spread out before them. Why they do
not come en masse and join in this
holiday of the trees is more than I can
understand. It seems as if the Creator
of heaven and earth had reserved
for the home of liberty the most gorgeous
colorings that prismatic light is
susceptible of bearing, and thrown
them all down in luxurious profusion
for the delectation of the people who
should shake off the man-serving spirit
and come here to breathe the air of
freedom and rejoice with nature through
the ten days of her gorgeous Thanksgiving
time.</p>
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<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</SPAN></span></p>
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