262 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



TREE PLANTING. 



This is a good, old-fashioned ex- 

 pression that all may understand, but 

 is it high-toned enough to suit the 

 advance of to-day 1 No ! not by a 

 great deal. It must be called Forestry, 

 to coincide with modern taste and 

 fashion. So let it be, say all the truly 

 interested, for though the mere planting 

 of a tree, or even of a row of trees, or 

 of an avenue along the public highway, 

 be but a small beginning of the art of 

 forestry, still it is a beginning, and so 

 are the institution of an Arbor-Day by 

 State authority, and the planting of 

 memorial trees upon that or upon any 

 other suitable day. 



The setting-out of a little tree by 

 every child connected with our glorious 

 common schools, either upon the school 

 lot, at their homes, in the parks, or on 

 the public highway, cannot fail to exert 

 a most happy influence upon the indivi- 

 dual and upon the community where it 

 is practiced. The child (who is father 

 to the man) thus learns to love and 

 respect these noble .representatives of 

 the vegetable kingdom. Those who 

 have witnessed the planting of, or after- 

 ward enjoyed the comfort and pleasure 

 afforded by, these shade-trees, though 

 never before appreciating these objects 

 either in their financial, economic, sani- 

 tary, or aesthetic aspects, are now obliged 

 at least to pause in their career of indif- 

 ference, or perhaps even of destructive 

 feelings toward trees. The establish- 

 ment of tree planting societies and 

 village improvement associations can- 

 not fail to benefit all those who are 

 engaged in them, and the general public 

 reaps the benefit of their efforts to 

 embellish and improve the country. 



Many thousands of people in the 

 State of Ohio were induced to plant 

 roadside trees in consequence of the 

 Governor's proclamation making Arbor- 

 Day a public holiday, and this was 



suggested by those who were making 

 arrangements for the first meeting of the 

 Forestry Congress at Cincinnati, which 

 instituted the extensive planting of 

 Presidential, Pioneer, Heroic, Authors', 

 Teachers', and other groves on the 

 beautiful hilltops of Eden Park — within 

 the city limits. Every child who par- 

 ticipated upon that occasion, or who 

 aided, and witnessed the tree planting in 

 the school-house lots scattered through 

 the country, and along many of the 

 thoroughfares, may thus have been made 

 an incipient forester, and will at least 

 have learned to look upon a tree with 

 increased respect. In many of the 

 country school lots the trees bear the 

 names of the pupils who planted them. 



Though not forestry, all these efforts 

 have their use, and they exert a most 

 happy influence upon the people by 

 directing their attention to the subject. 

 They help to familiarize us with trees ; 

 they direct our attention to the great 

 subject of true forestr}^, and thus become 

 valuable means of making the people 

 better acquainted with the possibilities 

 of the forestal wealth which should 

 exist in our country. 



In a large portion of our land nature 

 has already provided us a most noble 

 heritage of trees, many of them of great 

 value, and only after these had been 

 removed, and the native woodlands were 

 robbed of their most valuable numbers, 

 do we, the immediate descendants of 

 the wood-chopping, timber-destroying 

 pioneers — only then do we begin to 

 realize our loss and to think of the 

 absolute necessity for restoring the 

 forests. 



There are so many solid and substan- 

 tial reasons for the conservation and, 

 where necessary, the replanting of areas 

 of woodlands, it is surprising that so 

 intelligent a people as we proudly boast 

 ourselves to be, should have allowed 

 the country to reach the very verge of 



