46 



ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 



TREES IN THEIR LEAFLESS STATE. 



As the season for Arbor Day and 

 tree planting comes on, just before the 

 buds begin to swell and are getting 

 ready to cover the trees with a fresh 

 mantle of leaves, it is well as it is also 

 when the leaves have fallen from the 

 trees in autumn to give attention to 

 the bare trees and notice the character- 

 istic forms of the various species, the 

 manner in which their branches are 

 developed and arranged among them- 

 selves, for a knowledge of these things 

 will often enable one to distinguish the 

 ......" different kinds of trees more readily 



and certainly than by any other means. 



The foliage often serves as an obscuring veil, concealing, in part, at 

 least, the individuality and the peculiarities of the trees. But if one 

 is familiar with their forms of growth their skeleton anatomy, so to 

 speak he will recognize common trees at once with only a partial view 

 of them. 



Some trees, as the oak, throw their limbs out from the trunk hori- 

 zontally. As Dr. Holmes says : u The others shirk the work of resist- 

 ing gravity, the oak defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction for 

 its limbs so that their whole weight may tell, and then stretches them 

 out fifty or sixty feet so that the strain may be mighty enough to be 

 worth resisting." 



Some trees have limbs which droop toward the ground, while those 

 of most, perhaps, have an upward tendency, and others still have an 

 upward direction at first and later in their growth a downward inclina- 

 tion, as in the case of the elm, the birch, and the willows. Some, like 

 the oak, have comparatively few but large and strong branches, while 

 others have many and slender limbs, like some of the birches and 

 poplars. 



The teacher should call attention to these and other characteristics 

 of tree structure, drawing the various forms of trees on the blackboard 

 and encouraging the pupils to do the same, allowing them also to cor- 

 rect each other's drawings. This will greatly increase their knowledge 

 of trees and their interest in them as well as in Arbor Day and its 

 appropriate observance. 



