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has multiplied and spread over many thousand acres, so that it 

 is not only a benefit to ourselves, but also to the insects of the 

 air and the beasts of the field. This tree not only supplies us 

 with the wood which we need for cooking and the charcoal 

 which heats our irons when our clothes are pressed, but pro- 

 duces the flowers which furnish pastures- for the millions of bees 

 which convert the nectar of the blossoms into honey which we eat 

 on our bread and on our pancakes, and in the dry season when 

 the grass in the pastures is brown and dead it drops the sweet 

 yellow pods which are eagerly devoured by the cattle, horses, and 

 pigs if thev can get them before they are picked up by the little 

 children, who take them to the mills, where they are ground up 

 into meal to be fed to the animals later on. And how much more 

 pleasant are parts of our islands on account of the shade which 

 the algaroba trees produce. 



When my father was a little boy and rode from Nuuanu to 

 school at Punahou he had to ride around the makai side of 

 Punchbowl and then across the large, open, wind-swept plains 

 which are now crossed by Beretania street and which in those 

 days had scarcely a tree or a house on them. One day his horse 

 ran away with him and he let him run across this vast, treeless 

 stretch of country, part of which is now Thomas Square, and out 

 beyond until he came to a grassy place near a spring. Here he 

 selected a soft spot and slid out from the saddle safely onto the 

 ground. 



How different these plains are today ! They are not only 

 thickly covered with streets and houses, but the innumerable 

 trees that have been planted there have changed them from 

 bare, wind-swept flats to a comfortable residence district, and 

 when you look down upon them from Punchbowl they look like 

 a huge forest and half of the houses can not be seen on account 

 of the trees. 



We plant trees in the city not only for the ornament which 

 their foliage and flowers produce, and which please the eye, but 

 also for the shade which their spreading branches afl'ord and 

 which protect us from the sun. When you wait on the corner 

 for a street car on a hot day, how pleasant it is to seek the shade 

 of a spreading monkey-pod or royal poinciana, and when a sudden 

 shower comes up, isn't it a tree that you run to for siielter? 



The value of trees for producing wood for a hundred different 

 uses, for producing fuel, and shade and shelter, we unconsciously 

 accept because they minister to our needs and physical comfort 

 in a direct and tangible manner, but there is another way in 

 which the trees when growing together in a community, which 

 we call a forest, are equally as useful, only we do not reali/c it 

 because their usefulness is exerted in an indirect manner. It is 

 the effect of the trees in the forest on our water supply to which 

 I refer. 



When you drink your glass of clear water you should liiank 



