THE TRIPLET TREE. 



CHARLES COKE WOODS, PH.D. 



liyr ATTER per se is an evidence of 

 /Yl mind. Every material thing 

 2_ V enshrines a thought. Essen 

 tial nature has no superfluities. 

 To the thinker everything means some 

 thing. In nature nothing happens. 

 Everything is ordered. There can be 

 no portrait of a landscape without a 

 painter. There can be no landscape 

 without a maker. 



The visible forms that nature takes 

 may be changed. Her invisible forms 

 are changeless. The search for the 

 changeless is the great and delightful 

 task of art, literature, science, philoso 

 phy and religion. The ultimate in 

 nature and in art is divine. The per 

 manent principle survives the fleeting 

 form. Nature's principles are relatively 

 few. Her forms are multifarious. Tree 

 life is true life. It is natural. It is 

 therefore true. Nature's garb may be 

 odd. It may even be deformed. But 

 her inner self is never false. Sap, fiber, 

 leaf, blossom, fruit; this is nature's 

 apocalypse. It is Queen Beauty's pro 

 gressive revelation. 



Trees usually grow singly. Under 

 certain conditions they may as 

 naturally grow otherwise. The un 

 usual is not necessarily the unnatural. 

 Nature's resources are vast. She may 

 at any time manifest herself in an un 

 familiar form. 



A triplet tree grows on what is 

 known as " Green's Ranch " in Cowley 

 County, Kansas. The ranch is located 

 five miles northeast of Arkansas City. 

 The trees are about three hundred 



yards from the 'west bank of the 

 Walnut River. They range in a line 

 running north and south. They are 

 between forty-five and fifty feet high. 

 The first two on the north are eighteen 

 inches apart. The third tree standing 

 at the south end of the row is. fifteen 

 feet from the middle one. They are 

 water elms, and average about three 

 and one-half feet in girth, The tree 

 standing at the north end of the row is 

 hollow at the base and, leaning over 

 southward intersects the central tree 

 two feet from the ground; thence it ex 

 tends to the one at the south end of 

 the row, and intersects it with a limb 

 from either side twelve feet above the 

 ground. The segment of the circle 

 described by the leaning tree is about 

 twenty feet. At the points where the 

 cross tree intersects the other two, it is 

 not merely a case of contiguity, but of 

 actual identification. 



Another feature of the leaning tree 

 is that half way between its base and 

 the trunk of the second, and on the 

 lower side is an unsightly knot about 

 as large as a half bushel measure. 

 Half way between the center tree and 

 the one on the south, and on the under 

 side of the leaning tree is another lump 

 similar to the first, about half the size. 

 These unsightly warts appear to have 

 been produced by a congestion of sap 

 in the tissue of the intersecting tree. 

 This triplet tree is a curiosity. It pre 

 sents a strange phenomenon in tree 

 formation. But nature is everywhere 

 full of mystery and surprises. 



COUNTRIES DEVOID OF TREES. 



ANYONE who has traveled 

 through the comparatively tree 

 less countries around the Med 

 iterranean, such as Spain, Sicily, 

 Greece, northern Africa, and large 

 portions of Italy, must fervently pray 

 that our own country may be preserved 



from so dismal a fate, says President 

 Charles W. Eliot. It is not the loss 

 of the forests only that is to be 

 dreaded, but the loss of agricultural 

 regions now fertile and populous, 

 which may be desolated by the floods 

 that rush down from the bare hills 



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