316 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



history down to about the middle of the last 

 century every ship in the world was built of* 

 wood. Had no wood existed suitable for 

 sea-going vessels, the whole course of history, 

 and perhaps civilisation, would have been 

 different. Without ships the Mediterranean 

 could have been almost as impassable as was 

 the Atlantic. America would still have been 

 unknown, as well as Australia, and possibly 

 Africa ; and the whole world would be for us 

 smaller than in the days of Columbus. All 

 this might have happened if the nature of 

 vegetable growth, while differing little in 

 external form, and equally well adapted for an 

 intelligent animal life, had not possessed those 

 special qualities which fitted it for minister- 

 ing to the various needs of intellectual, 

 inventive, and advancing man." 



The axe, as Walt Whitman says, has been 

 the servant "of all great works on the land 

 and all great works on the sea." 



The planting of the oak has perhaps been 

 the noblest tradition handed down to us in 

 the ownership of land by the individual. 

 The thought of an England in the future, 

 when planting for posterity was the one 

 quality which ennobled the ownership of land 



