THE TREE PLANTERS OF AMERICA 35 



PUBLIC OPINION 



will undoubtedly insure its prompt and sound success. The farmer 

 boy and the tree are natural companions and a movement to con- 

 nect the two in a great systematic national reforestation program 

 proceeds from a natural base. 



The increasing value and scarcity of trees will help in im- 

 pressing the mind of the present and future farmer boy with the 

 need for their preservation and restoration, at which practical first 

 result the movement is aimed. 



I cannot see how this plan will meet with anything except sup- 

 port at the hands of all government representatives, officials, pub- 

 lic bodies and individuals, everywhere. Some such organized gen- 

 eral movement is due and is wanted to unify the scattered and 

 rather sporadic efforts toward reforestation which have for some 

 time been put forth in various parts of the country so far with 

 local or indifferent success. 



If I were asked to suggest an auxiliary feature to the League's 

 plan, I would recommend that the "Tree Planters" include the boys 

 of towns and smaller cities, who might be interested in a special 

 movement looking to the planting of desirable and adaptable foliage 

 trees, along the streets of their villages and cities, for shade and 

 ornament. 



Our wealth in foliage trees has never been properly appre- 

 ciated or developed. Our forests, in every zone, abound in a great 

 variety of splendid foliage trees, many of them of the blooming 

 variety, such as the chestnut, catalpa, linden, locust, magnolia, etc., 

 which cultivation would greatly improve. 



Our towns do not at all adequately avail of the opportunities 

 which profusely surround them and which, if half improved, would 

 make almost any otherwise ugly faced village a charming place of 

 abode. For the beauty, freshness and purity of trees influence 

 humans about them they spread refinement, which is shortly writ- 

 ten all over the lineaments of the town or the street they inhabit. 



The fame of Paris as a city of beauty is traceable in no 

 small degree to the glory of its blooming chestnuts, pink and 

 white, in the spring. A drive over the Champs Elysees to the 

 Bois, in May, is near to a glimpse of Paradise, made so by the 

 splendid trees which line it and the color and fragrance of their 

 luxuriant blossoms. 



In our larger cities the baseball parks afford a splendid oppor- 

 tunity for tree planting. The average city baseball park is a deso- 

 late place, its physical aspect coarse and ugly in many cases 

 almost brutalizing. Trees would radically change this, and would 

 make the sport finer and the enjoyment for all fuller and higher. 



Who does not recall, with the recollection of great games upon 



