208 STATE HORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



beneatli that leafy canopy on u hot and dusty day is indeed a sensu ous 

 delight. 



That miniature forest is a prouder monument to the memory of the dead 

 statesman than pillar or monolith in Greenwood or Mount Auburn. Nay, I 

 had almost said, tlian a tablet in Westminster, whore stand the silent memen- 

 toes of the heroes and sages of the centuries louof gone by. 



A few years since, I was driving in the country one day with a gentleman 

 who was then an honored I'csident of this city, a good conversationist, and 

 keenly sensitive to all impressions from nature. In our drive we passed a 

 magnificent elm standing by the side of the country road, on the margin of 

 a stream. It was indeed a kingly tree, with stalwart trunk and wide-spread- 

 ing, graceful boughs that nearly trailed the ground. I directed his attention 

 to it, and pausing in his conversation, he lifted his hat reverently to the soli- 

 tary monarch, and I honored him for his silent worship of the beautiful as 

 embodied in this grand specimen of the Ulmus Americana. 



I remember once when I was a lad to have been walking along the road with 

 my grandfather, not far from our home in Western New York, when we came 

 upon a man who, with his assistants, was clearing the timber off a piece of 

 woodland ])reparatory to building ;i house thereon. On the plat a few feec from 

 the spot where they were at work was a spring which poured forth a copious 

 stream of cold, sparkling water. It was surrounded by a grove of handsome 

 trees. Among them I remember a wild cherry, a maple, an ironwood, a 

 witch-hazel, a beech, and others. A little way down the stream there stood a 

 hemlock (tlie tree so much admired by our Secretary). Already the "wood- 

 man's axe'' had done its work upon some of these trees. The good old man 

 approached the proprietor, and apologizing for the apparent interference, 

 begged to suggest that it might be better for the spring if the trees in its 

 vicinity were allowed to grow. The suggestion was taken kindly, and tiie trees 

 were spared, and left to cast their shadows over the purling waters. xV few 

 years since I visited the somewhat historic spot. The liouse, then about to be 

 built, had grown old in the intervening years. The trees spared by my grand- 

 father's intervention were there, and the spring was there, pouring forth its 

 waters, copious and cool as they had been nearly half a century before, while 

 other springs upon the neighboring hillsides, which had been deprived of their 

 leafy jjrutectors, had entirely dried up, or were far less abundant in their sup- 

 ply than formerly, I drank of the delicious water from the spring, cool and 

 pure as of yore, and blessed the memory of the kindly, thoughtful old man. 



Not many years ago a Governor of Michigan, whom most of you knew per- 

 sonally, and all loved and admired, issued a proclamation, appointing a certain 

 day, which he called "Arbor day," to be observed by the people of the beau- 

 tiful Peninsular State, which was his love and his pride, and calling upou 

 them to plant trees on that day in all its borders. You know I refer to the 

 late Governor John J. Bagley. In response to that proclamation, on a certain 

 day in May, of our Centennial year of 187G, more than a thousand trees were 

 planted witliin the limits of this city. I myself helped to plant some of them, 

 and you who hear me speak helped to plant some of them. And countless 

 other thousands were planted all over this beautiful Peninsula, and are to-day 

 standing and growing a perpetual remembrancer of the man whose busy brain 

 and warm heart were both enlisted in schemes for the happiness, prosperity, 

 health, and wealth, of the people whom he loved with all tiie ardor of a great 

 soul, for their constant growth towards a higher and nobler civilization. I do 

 not wonder that when he felt the icy hand of death reaching out toward him, 



