ARBOR-DAY. 689 



The charity infant who has opened its eyes in an institution is pe- 

 culiar to the city. Its chances for life are less than those of any other 

 class. Most of these babies if bottle-fed will die, as has been dem- 

 onstrated in some of our nurseries. This is not because the infants 

 are especially unhealthy when they come into the world. It is sur- 

 prising, when one considers what hardships, physical and mental, the 

 mothers have endured, that the children should be as robust and well- 

 formed as they generally are. 



In view of the disastrous effects of artificial feeding, the plan now 

 adopted is to have a woman nurse her own baby and one other. In 

 this way the mortality has been greatly reduced. The public infant 

 is probably best cared for when sent into the country and boarded 

 with farmers, and this is now extensively done by some of the institu- 

 tions. 



AKBOK-DAT. 



By N. H. EGLESTON. 



AMONG the agencies by which we may hope to remedy the evils 

 threatening us on account of the rapid wasting of our forests, 

 Arbor-day promises to be one of the most important. A little thing 

 to begin with, it is capable of such expansion as to become a wide- 

 spread power for good. 



For the settler on the naked, wind-swept prairie, to plant trees was 

 one of the first necessities of life. Certainly, without the presence of 

 trees existence there could not be comfortable, and the tendency of 

 one's surroundings was to forbid any but a low type of civilization or 

 of domestic life. Fertile soil is not all that is needful, nor can man 

 live, as he was designed to live, by bread alone. 



But manifest as was the need of tree-planting under the circum- 

 stances adverted to, it was not easy to effect the work. The very 

 magnitude of it was as discouraging as its necessity was imperative. 

 What could the planting done by a few settlers amount to on those 

 wide seas of verdure, treeless and shoreless ? Driven by necessity, as 

 we have said, they did, many of them at least, plant their little groves 

 of Cottonwood and other quick-growing but frail trees around their 

 cabins. These gave some shelter to the cabins and their inmates. 

 But what was to shelter the cattle and the crops ? The hap-hazard 

 efforts of a few, working here and there without concert, easily spent 

 themselves in attaining results far short of what were needed. 



It was the happy fortune of one living as a pioneer in the treeless 

 region of the West, not only to feel with those around him the evils 

 of their peculiar situation, but to devise an instrumentality which 

 would arouse an interest in the needed work and an enthusiasm for it 



VOL. XXTIII. — 44 



