IX. THE DECIDUOUS TREES IN WINTER 



"Yet lower bows the storm. The leafless trees 

 Lash their lithe limbs, and with majestic voice 

 Call to each other through the deepening gloom." 



J. G. Holland (Bitter-sweet). 



Largest of living things, and longest of life are the trees. 

 They have dominated the life of the greater part of the 

 habitable earth by the sheer vigor of their growth. They 

 have gone far toward making the world a fit place for us to 

 live in. Our ancestors were woodsmen. The forests pro- 

 vided them homes and shelter and food. The plants we now 

 raise in fields, and the animals we keep in stock pens, they 

 found growing or running wild in and about the borders of 

 the woods. The pioneers of our race in America were 

 woodsmen. When they entered the states of the upper 

 Mississippi Valley, they passed by the rich prairies and 

 settled in the less fertile lands of the wooded hills. They 

 wanted fuel and shelter and water. They sought for trees 

 and springs: finding these, they trusted to find with them 

 all else needful for a living. 



The trees themselves contributed largely of the materials 

 needed for the beginnings of human culture. A club for a 

 weapon, a sharpened stick for an instrument of tillage, a 

 hollowed log for a boat, and a sheet of bark for a roof these 

 were among the earliest of the agencies employed by man in 

 mollifying and bettering his environment. It is a far cry 

 from these few crude tree products to the numberless manu- 

 factured products of the present day. Our need of tree 

 products has multiplied inordinately, but our ways of getting 

 these have become circuitous. When an implement or a 

 utensil of wood is placed in our hand, all shaped and polished 

 and varnished, we scarcely think of the trees as its source. 



