38 ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 



Practical use of the day. Arbor Day and the preparation for it served to inculcate 

 love for the whole realm of the vegetable world and much knowledge of tree and 

 plant life. The schools also, after appropriate and interesting exercises in their 

 respective rooms, came together at the Massasoit spring on Baker street, and planted 

 a tree in memory of Massasoit. It might be well another year for the schools each 

 to plant a tree on some treeless street. A. E. Carpenter, superintendent. 



Among our monumental institutions. One of the pleasing evidences of improvement 

 in society and the cultivation of a higher public taste is found in the establishment 

 of Arbor Day. This interesting anniversary has not only found a place among the 

 monumental institutions of our country, but it has met with very general and cor- 

 dial approbation and support. It has its place in the calendar of our colleges, and 

 it becomes an educational agency to all the youth of the land by its relation to our 

 common schools. It has the support of no small number of enthusiastic advocates 

 who promote its observance and press its claims upon the public attention, and 

 build up around it its own peculiar and interesting literature. 



As the years go by and the trees now newly planted expand themselves outward 

 and rear themselves upward toward the sky, displaying their grand and majestic 

 proportions, so the traditions and stories that gather round them and the day that 

 gave them their place and their importance grow to be a living romance, blooming 

 with elevating sentiment and bearing the fruitage of cherished associations. 



When from the youth and childhood of the present proceed the names tbat attain 

 to greatness and to fame, till all lands are filled with their renown, then this anni- 

 versary will bring together assemblages at the plantings of to-day to teli over with 

 endless interest the stories of early struggles and victories, and so inspire to noble 

 ambitions and aims the generations that are to follow. Rev. J. Young. 



TREES AND SCHOOLS. 



If any persons should be peculiarly inter- 

 ested in trees it would seem to be those who 

 are at school and who are especially engaged 

 in the use of books, for the word book is the 

 same as the old English or Anglo-Saxon word 

 boc, which means a beech tree. The German 

 buck, book, is almost the same as buche, beech ; 

 and substantially similar words are found in 

 the Danish, Icelandic, and Gothic languages, 

 because before the invention of printing the books of 

 the people speaking these languages were written commonly 

 on pieces of the bark or wood of the beech trees. 

 Then those who are studying Latin know that the word liber means 

 both bark and book, which points to a similar usage. And those who 

 have entered upon the study of the Greek language have learned that 

 biblos, which means book, also means the inner bark of the papyrus 

 plant, because the old Egyptians used to write upon its smooth and 

 white surface. From the name of this plant again comes directly and 



