690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that would convert the necessary labor, to a large extent, into pleasure 

 — at least take from it the character and irksomcness of a drudgery. 

 The plan was, to fix upon a particular day, at the season of the year 

 when the trees are starting into fresh life, and to invite those in the 

 same general region to engage together on that day in the work of 

 tree-planting. The designation of a particular day had the effect to 

 prevent the propitious season of planting from slipping by unobserved, 

 while it had also the advantage and stimulative effect attendant upon 

 co-operative endeavor. The thought of tree-planting was thus at a 

 certain time made as it were to pervade the atmosphere, or rather, 

 perhaps, to become an atmosphere. 



Thus Arbor-day, or Tree-planting-day, originated, and the person 

 who put the question, not long since, in the columns of one of our 

 newspapers, " Who invented Arbor-day ? " used the right word. We 

 commonly apply the term invention to some machine or mechanical 

 contrivance. But there is no reason for thus restricting its meaning. 

 Arbor-day is as truly an invention as the cotton-gin or the steam- 

 engine, and, like those notable inventions, its importance and benefi- 

 cial results will be recognized in increasing measure with the lapse of 

 years. Governor Morton builded better than he knew when he gave 

 origin to this day. He was thinking chiefly of his own State, Ne- 

 braska, of beautiful name, but swept by the fierce blizzards of the 

 Northwest and the hardly less harmful sirocco-blasts from the torrid 

 South. He was contriving a plan to raise up against these harmful 

 agencies the effective barrier of the leafy trees. His plan commended 

 itself at once to his fellow-citizens, and in the first year of its adoption 

 more than ten million trees were planted. Nor was the happy inven- 

 tion limited in its application by the boundaries of a single State. 

 The people of neighboring States and Territories, with similar needs, 

 one after another, adopted it, until it may be said to have become a 

 fixed institution throughout the prairie region of the country. 



But Arbor-day is not for the treeless regions of the West alone. 

 The principle of associated and simultaneous action which it embodies 

 commends it for adoption almost everywhere. States where once the 

 trees were so abundant as to be in the way of agricultural improve- 

 ment, and to call for the axe and the fire to remove them as speedily as 

 possible, or where their value for lumber had occasioned their rapid and 

 general displacement, are now welcoming Arbor-day to assist them in 

 regaining the condition which they lost by the inconsiderate destruc- 

 tion of their best friends. Thus jNIichigan, lately a wilderness of for- 

 est, and even yet sending to market annually more lumber than any 

 other State, but becoming sensible of the need of trees for other use 

 than to be converted into lumber, has made experiment of Arbor-day, 

 and in his designation of the lltli of April last, by public proclama- 

 tion, Governor Alger earnestly recommended that on that day "we 

 plant trees by the road-side, by our farm-houses, in our fields, parks, 



