12 Common Trees 



INVALUABLE TREATISE 



By Hon. Vic Donahey, 

 Governor of Ohio. 



Every boy and girl in Ohio should study nature at first- 

 hand. 



No education is complete without an understanding of its 

 "various languages." 



There is a certain phase of this important subject to which 

 I have called marked attention each year since I became Gov- 

 ernor — it is that of trees and forests. Arbor Day, which is 

 April 17th, has afforded me an opportunity to proclaim the 

 necessity for vital interest in our trees. The occasion which 

 might just as well have been called "Everybody-Plant-A- 

 Tree Day" has served its purpose well but our schools should 

 go much further than the mere observance of it. 



A treatise which acquaints the school children of this 

 commonwealth with common trees will prove invaluable. 

 The lessons of youth are a lumination to the pathway of 

 the adult. Let us inculcate in the minds of our boys and 

 girls a love for their real friends — our trees. 



WELFARE OF MANKIND 



FROM childhood I have been interested in trees, their lessons and 

 their beneficent contributions to the welfare of mankind. He who 

 plants a tree renders a service to humanity. Long after the one who 

 plants and nurtures it is gone, the tree refreshes by its shade or sus- 

 tains by its fruit. Johnny Appleseed, who gathered apple seeds from 

 the orchards of the East and carried them on his back into the remote 

 forest fastnesses of Ohio and planted them, rendered a greater service to 

 Ohio than many a statesman or military hero famed in the annals of 

 history. 



Tree planting is not entirely a vicarious service. As a boy, I helped 

 plant shade trees that are now more than two feet in diameter, and for 

 years I have enjoyed the annual harvest of fruit trees which I helped my 

 father to plant. Father always urged the necessity of setting out fruit 

 trees, and when he was 80 years old he planted cherry trees, the fruit 

 of which he lived to enjoy and which is now being gratefully enjoyed 

 by others. 



Trees have personality — it is no mere metaphor to speak of the 

 sturdy oak, the stately elm, the graceful maple, the drooping willow- 

 all speak a voiceless tongue and kindle human hope and aspiration. A 

 man can make a house, but it takes God to make a tree; what it took God 

 a thousand years to build, man may hew down in an hour. 



I saw through my childhood years a solid line of heavy dark woods 

 on the farms across the way. I knew every tree that reared its head into 

 the sky line, but one towered above them all like a giant — it was a 



