TREES AND TREES. 



Trees, like the rocks, have written the history of the 

 ages ; they are also their own chronologists, and some 

 now standing have, during a period of ninety genera- 

 tions of men, marked off each year in their own great 

 bodies more legibly than it could have been written in 

 a book. The tree is the most highly organized of plant 

 bodies ; it possesses greater longevity and attains larger 

 dimensions than any other object ; but great age does 

 not impair its usefulness, nor size mar its symmetry of 

 proportion. It is a thing of grace and beauty from the 

 time, as a plantlet, it strikes its little radicle into the 

 earth in search of sustenance, and lifts the delicate 

 plumule from its cotyledonous bed to live a life in air 

 and sunshine. 



'No other object combines use and beauty in such 

 infinite proportion. It furnishes us fuel and yields us 

 food ; it shelters man and beast from wind and storm, 

 and shields them from the rays of the noonday sun. In 

 all ages it has furnished the chief material for building 

 and adorning men's homes, as it also enters largely into 

 nearly all the industries of civihzation ; and yet, with all 

 its manifold uses, we love it better for its beauty's sake 

 and for the pleasant associations that so often cluster 



