MEN AND TREES 



caterpillars that got such headway in New York 

 State that it threatened to become a public calamity 

 was effectually checked by the cold and rain of the 

 May of 1917. Not one tent caterpillar have I seen 

 during the past three years. The plague of currant- 

 worms was checked in the same way. Sooner or later 

 any excess is sure to be corrected. But so far as we 

 can see, such things as the chestnut blight and hick- 

 ory blight must rage like a fire till they have spent 

 themselves and there are no more chestnut- or hick- 

 ory-trees to be destroyed. Throughout the course of 

 the biological history of the globe, both plants and 

 animals have dropped out in some such way, and 

 new forms come in — come in through the slow ac- 

 tion of the evolutionary impulse. 



The Providence I see at work in the case of the 

 trees does not differ at all from the Providence I see 

 at work in the case of men. It is one and the same, 

 and that one is as I have so often said, wholesale, 

 indiscriminating, regardless of individuals, regard- 

 less of waste, delays, pain, suffering, failure, yet in- 

 suring success on a universal scale, the scale of cen- 

 turies and geologic periods. Our standards of time 

 compared with Nature's standards are like our in- 

 terplanetary spaces compared with the inconceiva- 

 ble abysses of the sidereal heavens — minutes com- 

 pared to centuries. Our little family of planets 

 moves round the fireside of our little sun — a 

 small chimney-corner in the vast out-of-doors of 



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