ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 



TREES IN MASSES FORESTS. 



Interesting as trees are, considered 

 singly, admirable for their beauty, every 

 leaf a worthy object of study, we do not 

 know their value and importance until 

 we contemplate them in masses, or as 

 forests. The single tree on the lawn or 

 by the roadside may be more beautiful 

 and excite our admiration more than any 

 to be found in the forest, because, having 

 abundant space and light and air on 

 "every side, it has developed itself syrn- 

 metrically and to the full perfection of 

 its nature, which the tree in the forest, 

 more or less crowded by its neighbors, 

 can not do. But when we come to con- 

 sider the usefulness rather than the 

 beauty of trees, we must look to the 



forests, those great masses which often cover whole mountains or vast 

 plains with their continuous stretches. Let us notice, therefore, some 

 of the uses of masses of trees, or the importance which trees have when 

 growing together in large numbers, and which does not belong to the 

 tree when considered singly. 



In the first place, then, it is from the forest that we obtain the fuel 

 by which principally we warm our houses and sustain the fires in most 

 of our furnaces and factories. It is from the forest that we obtain the 

 timber for the construction of our houses, our ships, our railway cars, 

 and the track upon which the cars are borne so smoothly and safely. 

 It is the forests which supply us with the raw material that is wrought 

 into so many objects of usefulness and convenience. Professor Sargent, 

 who undertook ten years ago to ascertain the condition of the forests 

 of the United States, estimated the yearly value of the lumber, fuel, 

 and other forest products at that time as more than $700,000,000. Their 

 value is now at least $1,060,000,000, a sum that exceeds the value of our 

 crops of wheat, oats, rye, corn, and tobacco taken together, and is 

 greater than that of all our exports, and more than fourteen times as 

 great as the produce of our mines of silver and gold. It is esti- 

 mated that we consumed last year, of sawn lumber alone, more than 

 30,000,000,000 square or superficial feet. But such figures by them- 

 selves are meaningless. Let us consider, then, that this amount of 

 lumber would load a train of cars sufficient to encircle the earth at the 

 equator. And now, if we add to the sawn lumber, which is only a 

 small part of the total produce of the forests, the timber, the railroad 

 ties, the telegraph poles, the posts for fences, and the wood cut for fuel 



