16 FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 



six hundred square feet, or an area equal to pretty 

 nearly half an acre. Every inch of this expanse 

 breathes in life for the tree, and out health for 

 man, while it absorbs in the aggregate an enormous 

 amount of heat and sunlight. In time of rain it also 

 holds the moisture, and allows it to evaporate by 

 slow degrees when hot days return. The forests are 

 vast sponges, which, through the agency of leaves, 

 soak up the beneficent raindrops and compel them to 

 pass slowly through shaded channels to the parched 

 lands beyond. It is indeed quite impossible to over- 

 estimate the value of the billions and billions of 

 leaves which work and build for the benefit of hu- 

 manity. Only forty per cent of a tree is utilized by 

 the woodsman ; the pity of it is that the waste is so 



fearfully out of proportion to the gain. I do not say 

 that a waste of leaves is a very serious loss, but I do 

 say that the wanton destruction of more than half 

 the tree, with its thousands of leaf-workers, is inex- 

 cusably careless. 



A tree is most likely felled at an immature age ; * 

 how much larger it would grow if given an extra ten 

 years' lease of life some of us would be astonished to 

 learn. In that time a sugar maple I call to mind, at 



* Spruce and pine " sticks " (the trimmed logs) are floated 

 down the Merrimack River to the lowland mills by thousands, not 

 one of which measures more than nine or ten inches in diameter. 



