STATE HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 27 



in store for them by as joyous an experience as their circumstances 

 will permit. Let the sunshine fall upon them, and develop within 

 them strong and wholesome qualities that will be so much needed in 

 after life. 



The second way is by contributing to the child's health. Every- 

 thing that helps to develop sound, wholesome bodies, is at this stage 

 of life inexpressibly valuable. If the child reaches maturity with a 

 diseased or enfeebled physical frame, he is handicapped in the race 

 of life. A healthy body is the substratum of all great achievements. 

 And if the shelter of the school house yard from the fierce rays of 

 the sun in sumnier, and from the violent blasts of the wind in win- 

 ter, does not tend to promote sound health, where shall we look for 

 such tendency? One of the severest trials to health in this conti- 

 nental climate is found in the extremes of temperature and moisture 

 and air movements. Our ailments are thought to arise largely from 

 the sudden changes to which we are subjected. But the effect of 

 trees is to equalize these forces. The intense heat, the extreme cold, 

 the violent blasts — they are all mitigated, tempered by the presence 

 of trees. Perhaps it may be said that in no part of the world is 

 this equalizing influence in climate more needed than in the Missis- 

 sippi valley. Our averages here are all admirable — the average tem- 

 perature, the average rain fall, the average wind force — they are all 

 very near what the human system requires for its best development. 

 Our dangers arise from the extremes in these particulars. And here 

 the trees help us. They supply the very element in which we are 

 most wanting. 



There are other ways in which trees contribute to the health 

 of young and old. In the absorption of certain noxious gases, in 

 the giving forth of health inspiring oxygen, they help to bring about 

 the same important end. But I leave these points for the scientific 

 experts — for the men to whom these things are more familiar than 

 they are to the mass of people. 



The trees in a school yard may also be made an effective and 

 very useful means of education. 13y the theory of pedagog}'^ now 

 commonly accepted, one of the early needs of children is the culti- 

 vation of the senses, the training of eye and ear and feeling. Now 

 trees present wonderful opportunities for the training of these 

 powers. Their great diversities, their points of agreement, the almost 

 infinite variety in the forms of leaves, the number of shades of color 

 in leaf and flower and bark, the arrangement and direction of branches, 

 the different forms of trunk, the general contour of the branches, the 

 arrangement of moss on the bark, the structure of flowers, the form 

 and color and quality of fruit — each of these is an education by 

 itself when rightly used; and unitedly, they may be truly said to 

 furnish opportunity for a liberal culture. For it would be a great 

 waste of opportunity to surround school houses with trees and then 

 fail to use them in the development of the children's minds. Prof. 



