34 ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 



to show those who follow that you were unselfish enough to labor for the benefit of 

 posterity that you may never see. You may at least exemplify the noble justice of 

 leaving the world in as good condition for the prosperity of your children as you 

 found it for yourselves. All this you may do by simply planting a tree, which will 

 grow while you sleep and draw its strength and its long life and large Tisefulness from 

 the sunshine and the storm, costing nothing, " harming no one, blessing everyone, 

 and pleasing God." Will you do it? 



Suppose each child in the State of Pennsylvania between the ages of 5 and 17 

 years plants a tree which grows to a mature size. Put these all together at 15 feet 

 apart, and you will have a forest of 11^ square miles. That means 7,360 acres of for- 

 est good, productive forest. Each acre of such forest can, in the growing season, 

 give back to the air about 14,500 tons of water by evaporation or transpiration. In 

 other words, as the result of planting one tree for each school child of to-day there 

 might be distilled back into our air, from this eleven and more square miles of forest 

 area each growing season, 106,720,000 tons of water. 



Now I want to ask you if you know what that water does up in the sky. It 

 destroys the frost which kills your crops. That is, each one of you here who plants 

 a long-lived tree of a kind that may grow to large proportions, will, when it has grown 

 to middle size, be placing away up there in the sky over seventy tons of water each 

 year, which is to help protect and produce the grain on which your grandchildren 

 will live. Indeed, it may be, you will find when you are done with earth that you 

 have placed something in the sky of more importance still. You know that to "love 

 your neighbor " is half of the Divine command. Will you plant a tree somewhere 

 this year? 



SCHOOLS OF AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE. 



The relation of Arbor Day to 

 agriculture and horticulture is 

 well set forth by Hon. Charles E. 

 Skinner, State superintendent of 

 schools, New York : 



There is a practical as well as a senti- 

 mental side to Arbor Day. It had its 

 inception in a commendable movement 

 looking to the protection of our forest 

 trees, and what may be called the making 

 of new forests on the vast plains of the 

 West. The sentimental feature attached 

 to its observance has been in the develop- 

 ment of a love for Nature and her won- 

 derful works, and in the encouragement 

 to delightful study of trees, plants, flow- 

 ers, and birds. There is no doubt that in hundreds of thousands of the children 

 of our country there has been awakened a deep interest in the attractive study of 

 how plants grow, of the use and abuse of trees, and of the relations which birds 

 and flowers bear to the problem of Nature and to human happiness. A child who 

 learns to love trees and flowers and who derives happiness from them can never go 

 entirely wrong. The whole subject tends to a closer study of Nature in ail who 

 have a love for growing things. This study of Nature can be turned to practical 

 use, and be made of lasting benefit to many thousands of the world's workers, 

 especially to those whose privilege it is to till the soil and from the farms to feed 

 the world. There is a lack of knowledge of the scientific principles of agriculture. 

 This lack increases manual labor without increasing results or happiness. How to 



