A BEGINNER IN FORESTRY 



6ii 



j^eneral thing — there are large open 

 spaces every httle way, places where 

 the sun streams in and illuminates the 

 whole scene with a radiant, heavenly 

 glory that makes the legend of St 

 Hubert most easily believed. 



I spoke once of the exquisite "order" 

 of the German woods, and I must speak 

 of that again. As I said before, this 

 is no frequented resort, no show-place ; 

 and vet the woods-paths, the little 

 bridges, the tiny stone culverts, the 

 wide, even macadamized roads for 

 wood transport — everything is in what 

 we might call ""most beautiful order." 

 The dead branches and twigs belong to 

 the poor to gather for the first two days 

 after storm or wind. We see them 

 coming home — old men and women — - 

 their load bound on their shoulders. 

 Just as thev have come for thousands 

 of years. They go quietly by piles of 

 neatly stacked cut wood to be taken t(^ 

 town and sold when the men shall have 

 time, and the cut wood remains undis- 

 turbed until that time. The absolute, 

 sturdy honor and honesty of the poor 

 man in Europe is quite as much to each 

 nation's credit as the care that they 

 give to their trees. In my eyes, it 

 links somehow to the spirit that leals 

 the market woman to leave her full 

 basket outside the church door and go 

 in to pray. W'c shall come to that 

 spirit in future centuries ; we laugh at 

 it now, because it is as easy to laugh 

 as it is to give the Galifornia trees over 

 to the executioner ; but — a long way 

 ahead — we shall not laugh. We shall 

 pray, too, in that day — w^e shall give 

 cast-off wood to the poor instearl of 

 heaping it together to burn ; forthwith 

 we shall have a reverence for what has 

 grown old in service, and we shall be 

 as willing to furnish schools for our 

 trees as for our children. Some few 

 out of each thousand know now how 

 close is the unseen bond between the 

 trees that we are trying to guard and 

 those same children. It is closer yet 



between the trees and those children's 

 children. And between our trees of to- 

 day and the third generation hence it 

 may well be vital. 



One little word more, and then I 

 shall have filled my space and must 

 end. I want to tell of a curious way 

 the like of which I never saw before. 



For about a quarter of a mile along 

 the highway there runs on one side a 

 wide strip of land laid off in rows of 

 parallel trees (parallel with the road), 

 planted about ten feet apart, but with 

 deep hollows running lengthwise be- 

 tween. The trees have had their to])s 

 cut in the old, French fashion until the 

 new sprouts form a thick cover over- 

 head, the whole too low to walk tipright 

 through. I was very curious about this 

 way, and could not think by whom or 

 for what purpose it could possibly have 

 been made. 



So I asked the forester, and he told 

 me that the way used to stretch around 

 the angle and down the hillside to the 

 manor-house barns, and that it was 

 planted centuries since and kept filled in 

 as the old trees died, so as to provide 

 a covered shelter for the herds and 

 flocks which were driven daily through 

 the wood and out to the pasture land 

 on the other side. The herds and flocks 

 are not so plenty now, and the wav it- 

 self has been curtailed ; but when it 

 rains we go in under its close, green 

 shelter, and — like many jnoderns who 

 think the sun takes a year to go care- 

 fully and kindly around our little earth 

 — thank the old lords of the manor for 

 having thoughtfully saved us a wet- 

 ting. 



I hope next time to write something 

 of the old forest-history of Germany — 

 something of the days when the kaisers 

 or kdnigs gladly gave forests away if 

 the receiver would just kindly measure 

 them and save the crown the trouble 

 of working out the problem of its own 

 generosity. 



