ARBOR-DAY. 693 



introduction into them of the natural sciences with all their healthful 

 and helpful influences. 



And just here, also, if we mistake not, is our best guarantee for the 

 promotion of forestry and for the solution of a great national problem. 

 The children, who have been invited and assisted to plant shrub and 

 tree on their school-house grounds, will soon be interested in the work 

 of their elders, as they plant trees along the borders of the streets, and 

 will ask to join in it. Next, they will be ready to assist in bringing 

 trees, with w'hich it may be sought perhaps to give the village ceme- 

 tery a more pleasant look ; or they will enter wdth sympathy into the 

 work of converting some neglected spot of ground into a comely park, 

 or clearing up a rough piece of woodland so as to make it a desirable 

 place of resort and recreation. Thus, going on from year to year, a 

 new generation will soon have come to manhood and womanhood, a 

 generation full of the love of trees as such, and not estimating them 

 merely for their value as lumber or cord-wood. They will even have 

 a poetic sensibility in respect to the trees. Like the old Greeks, they 

 ■will sometimes people the woods and groves with dryads, or, as our 

 ancestors did, with gnomes and sprites. They will have learned, also, 

 as their fathers have not, the important relations which the forests 

 sustain to climate, to the precipitation and distribution of moisture 

 from the sky and clouds, and its exhalation from the ground. They 

 will be sensible of their influence upon the hot and cold currents of 

 the air, and their value to agriculture by serving as effective barriers 

 against them. They will have learned, as their fathers have not, how 

 nicely adjusted to each other are the forces of the natural world, and 

 how hazardous it is to disturb their equilibrium, yet how easily in our 

 ignorance or recklessness we may do it. The fact will be familiar to 

 them that the woodman, by an improvident use of his axe upon the 

 hill-side, may let loose the torrent or the avalanche, which may hurl 

 ruin upon the fertile valley below. Well knowing these and many 

 other things respecting the trees, of which the present generation for 

 the most part are ignorant, or which they are slow to learn, the new 

 generation will recognize, as we do not, that the trees are essential to 

 man's highest welfare, that they are his best friends, that they are the 

 constituted partners of the world with him, that human life in fact 

 would be impossible without them. Recognizing these facts, as the 

 new generation come into society as its directors, we may expect that 

 they will be conservative of the forests, and thus conservative also of 

 the best interests of the country. 



