OUR COUSINS, THE TREES. 45* 



''I care not how men trace their ancestry. 

 To ape or Adam ; let them please their whim ; 

 But I in June am midway to believe 

 A tree among my far progenitors. 

 Such sympathy is mine with all the race, 

 Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet 

 There is between us. Surely there are times 

 When they consent to own me of their kin, 

 And condescend to me, and call me cousin. 



"And I have many a lifelong, leafy friend, 

 Never estranged nor careful of my soul, 

 That knows I hate the axe, and welcomes me 

 Within his tent as if I were a bird. 

 Or other free companion of the earth. 

 Yet undegenerate to the shifts of men." 



You will notice that he adopts no air of patronage in mentioning 

 the closeness of this bond, but instead, uses the expression, "they 

 consent and condescend," which denotes the true tree-lover, and 

 afifords a vast contrast to the complacent air of human superiority 

 which Tennyson displays in his equally noted poem, "The Talking 

 Oak." Many other American authors, like Hawthorne, Thoreau, 

 Holmes, Burroughs, Aldrich and Schwarz, avoid, as well, a pomp- 

 ous attitude toward "our cousins" in their published writings, and 

 we can read such books with a warm interest denied to the less 

 sympathetic writer. The poet's thought in tracing his ancestry 

 back of the ape to the tree is an idea certainly more pleasing to the 

 fancy than the bald statement of the law of evolution ; and his ha- 

 tred of the axe finds response in many a breast, even though we 

 Ineekly resign ourselves, the next moment, as a convert to the meth- 

 ods of the scientific forester. His self-congratulation that the 

 leafy friend is a lifelong one, never estranged or over-zealous, is a 

 feeling that we all have had reason to experience, at times, when 

 some human friend has injured our sensibilities so that we crave 

 comprehension and consolation. Mother Nature is not always able, 

 in many of her manifestations, to readily adjust herself to our more 

 sorrowful or tragic moods ; for we then gaze almost reproachfully 

 at the sun — he is too brilliant ; at the sky — it is too blue ; at the brook 

 — it babbles of glee ; at the ocean — its terrific sublimity passes us by. 

 The immovable mountains, aspiring to heaven, are more akin, but 

 their remote grandeur leaves us unconsoled, and it remains for our 

 cousins, the trees, to apply a soothing balm to the wounded spirit. 

 It is then, mayhap, that one ponders most fervently upon their 

 beauty and endearing qualities. 



Stately benignity seems embodied in the oak, elm, beech, linden, 

 chestnut, maple, pine and others of the larger growth, while the 

 smaller varieties claim recognition like childhood's playmates and 

 the host of edible fruit-bearing species spread their choice stores 

 invitingly, with never tiring hospitality. They all appeal to us, each 

 in his own way and in our own way ; for personal predilection 

 counts for much in determining preference on the part of our leafy 



