STATE rOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 8l 



never quite setting. Is it not worth while to be acquainted at 

 least with the more prominent stars so that we may recognize 

 them as old friends on their reappearance each in its season ? 



The very rocks are beautiful, whether as on some mountain 

 top bold and bare, wind-swept and storm beaten, or more often 

 gray with lichens or green with mosses or outcropping amid 

 grasses and shrubbery. The hills and valleys are beautiful, 

 whether the valleys are sharply cut into gorges and canyons, or 

 by longer weathering worn down into more flowing outlines. 

 Stand for an illustration on Mount Percival and look far out and 

 see our fringed coasts and the many islands lifting themselves 

 to your view and the very blue of the sea rising up to your vision 

 until it meets the blue of the sky in the far horizon. 



In the trees and smaller plants we find a beauty of endless 

 variety and of ceaseless changes. How the trees differ in size, 

 in form, in foliage, in coloring; how they change from season 

 to season. Think of the giant sequoias of California 300 or even 

 400 feet in height, 100 feet in circuit at the foot, and in age the 

 Methuselahs of the forest counting their years by the 6,000 or 

 7,000. Contrast these tallest of trees with the willows of the 

 far north where the fully grown tree may not be more than two 

 or three inches in height, or with the evergreen trees on Mount 

 Washington or on our own Katahdin where the trees become 

 mere dwarfs crouching closely to the thin soil and the rocks lest 

 they should be torn away by the winds. 



In the extensive forests of our Pine Tree State beauty and 

 utility go hand in hand. Alas that this glory of our State should 

 ever depart. But when we contrast the small logs which are now 

 floated to our mills with the huge sticks of timber of which our 

 fathers tell us, it would seem that there might be danger of 

 regretting too late our own lack of care for our woods. Forestry 

 and orcharding are not so far apart but that each may learn 

 something of value from the other. 



Trees have relation to each other and to smaller plants which 

 are often very interesting and suggestive. When the farmer 

 transplants trees into a row to serve as a protective hedge to 

 shelter more delicate plants, he is only doing on a small scale that 

 which nature often does on a large one. My attention has been 

 recently called to a most striking example of this fact. When 

 our forests of spruce are cut off, it is well known that they do 



