ARBOR-DAY. 691 



villages, and cities, around our school-houses, and in the cemeteries 

 where sleep our beloved dead. . . . We may not live," he said, "to 

 enjoy the full fruits of this work, but our children and our children's 

 children will receive the benefit of our labor." 



Pennsylvania, in keeping with that wise consideration of the value 

 of trees which led William Penn to prescribe, among the early laws of 

 his colony, "that, in clearing the ground, care be taken to leave one 

 acre of trees for every five acres cleared," has followed Michigan in 

 the recent adoption of Arbor-day. 



The older Northern and Eastern States have not the same interest 

 in forestry as the prairie States. They are comparatively well-wooded. 

 Yet, even among them, such have been the encroachments upon the 

 woodlands by the axe and by fire as seriously to affect the flow of 

 streams, and the manufacturing and agricultural interests dependent 

 upon them. In several of these States attention has been called to the 

 subject, and its manifest importance has led to legislative action look- 

 ing to the protection of what forests remain and to the planting of 

 new ones. Most of the New England States are now engaged in the 

 serious investigation of their forestral condition. The boards of agri- 

 culture have taken it into consideration, and some of them have urged 

 the adoption of Arbor-day as an instrumentality of importance to the 

 interests of the States. 



Thus the Arbor-day idea is seen to have spread far beyond the 

 place of its origin. It has been formally adopted already by sev- 

 enteen of our States, and bids fair to be adopted soon by many 

 others. 



A noticeable and important development of the Arbor-day move- 

 ment is its connection with the public schools. This may be said to 

 date from the memorable tree-planting by the pupils of the public 

 schools of Cincinnati, on the occasion of the meeting of the American 

 Forestry Congress in that city in the spring of 1882. No one who was 

 present will ever forget the scene, when, on a lovely May day, twenty 

 thousand school-children, marshaled by their teachers, formed a part 

 of the grand procession which, amid banners fluttering from every 

 window, and with the accompaniment of military battalions and 

 bands of music, went out to the beautiful and well-named Eden Park, 

 and there, in Authors' Grove, planted trees in memory of the most 

 eminent authors and statesmen of our own and other lands. It was 

 a lesson in practical forestry and of practical education at the same 

 time. It Avas a grand and impressive object-lesson of the best charac- 

 ter, and one that reached far beyond the circle of those immediately 

 engaged in it. If the children were taken out among the trees for 

 a holiday, the trees were thenceforth and thereby brought into the 

 schools of Cincinnati, and the sweet influences of Nature connected 

 with the school-room and its studies as never before. That holiday 

 was made a most impressive and valuable school-day. It was for the 



