62 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



it is at a university conducted by man. He trains 

 them largely for the bountiful tuition they pay, 

 though sometimes he does it out of pure love for 

 their beauty and companionship. With his mar- 

 vellous knowledge of the laws which govern tree 

 life and his ingenious faculty of adopting means to 

 ends, man often makes wonderful progress with 

 his passive charges. He heals and cares for their 

 bodies better than they ever could themselves. By 

 his universal domination of the plant world, he se- 

 cures for them that freedom and advantage of en- 

 vironment which enables them to bring their inher- 

 ent abilities to full fruition. He even works upon 

 the very fundamentals of their existence and so 

 shapes and improves their life-streams as to bridge 

 in a few years the gap in development which nat- 

 ural evolutionary processes would have taken ages 

 to span. Subject, yet lord, of the laws of nature 

 is man. 



Consider the hospital department of man's Tree 

 College. Humans are in a position to give the 

 trees an immense amount of medical help. The 

 more the tremendous economic and esthetic value 

 of the trees is realised, the more is man, for his own 

 interest, apt to look after their physical welfare. 

 Yet he is only beginning to appreciate his duties in 

 this field. Too often one may see a large spreading 



