ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



strips the elms, and the invasion of a foreign deadly 

 fungus kills all the chestnuts, these calamities are 

 paralleled by the plagues that in past times have 

 swept away large numbers of human beings and 

 depopulated whole countries, or by epidemic dis- 

 eases, such as infantile paralysis, that now and then 

 rage over widespread areas. 



Go and sit down in our mixed beech, maple, birch, 

 and oak woods and witness the varying fortunes of 

 the trees. How many of them have had misfortunes 

 of one kind or another! How few, if any, have 

 reached their ideal ! How many are diseased or dying 

 at the top or decaying at the root ! Some have been 

 mutilated by the fall of other trees. Youth and age 

 meet and mingle. Some trees in their teens, as it 

 were, are very thrifty; others are old and decrepit. 

 In fact, the fortunes of the individual trees are much 

 like those of men and women in a human com- 

 munity — struggle, competition, defeat, decay, and 

 death on all sides. All, or nearly all, the evils that 

 afflict men have their counterpart in the evils that 

 afflict the trees of the forest. When some species of 

 forest worm threatens the destruction of our beech 

 or maple forests some other form of insect-life steps 

 in and puts an end to their increase, and the plague 

 vanishes. The gypsy and the brown-tailed moths 

 which have so ravished the groves and forests of the 

 Eastern States will doubtless in time be held in 

 check by their natural enemies. The plague of tent 



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