MEN AND TREES 



ter. The conifers are more clannish than the decidu- 

 ous trees. 



Are not a generation of leaves and a generation of 

 men subject to about the same laws of chance? The 

 baby leaves have their enemies in insects that de- 

 vour them, in blight that withers them, in frost that 

 cuts them short, and when they are matured, how 

 the winds buffet them (Nature does n't temper the 

 wind to the tender leaf), how the gales lash them, 

 how the hail riddles them! If they had powers 

 of thought, what a struggling, agitated, unstable 

 world they would think themselves born into! 

 When a summer tempest strikes a maple- or an oak- 

 tree, the strain and stress of the foliage is almost 

 painful to witness. Yet when the tempest subsides, 

 hardly a leaf is torn or detached, and when autumn 

 comes, the ranks of the vast army of the leaves are 

 but little thinned, and the great majority of leaves 

 ripen and fall to the ground unscathed. They have 

 come through the campaign of life and have experi- 

 enced many ups and downs, and yet, on the whole, 

 they have each had an active and useful life. The 

 leaf -rollers have made their nests in a few of certain 

 kinds of them, the leaf-cutters have made holes in 

 certain other kinds, the gall insects have made their 

 nurseries at the expense of still other kinds; but all 

 these things amount to a small fraction of the whole. 

 When a plague of forest worms comes and strips the 

 maples or the beeches, or a plague of elm-beetles 



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