ARBOR DAY ITS HISTORY AND OBSERVANCE. 9 



them from their places, and pouring out the debris of disintegrated 

 rock upon the fertile meadows below to the depth of many feet. 



The settlers in the peaceful valleys at the foot of the mountains, to 

 whom the dense forests had sent from their saturated spongy soil and 

 the slowly melting snows under their protecting shade a steady and 

 sufficient supply of water to enable them to prosecute their farming 

 operations in that arid region with an assurance of success nowhere 

 surpassed, now found themselves at the mercy of torrents in the spring 

 season and droughts in the summer time, and were forced to abandon 

 their no longer productive farms. Those green mountain slopes which 

 it had taken centuries of growth to prepare as the guarantee of fertil- 

 ity to the fields below are gone. Naked rocks only are now to be seen 

 in their place. It will take centuries to clothe them again with trees, 

 and meanwhile the valleys and plains below will remain the desert 

 which the greed and recklessness of man have created there. 



With the enormous consumption of our forests now going on and 

 rapidly increasing and the consequent diminution of our forest area, 

 the need of tree planting becomes greater with every passing year, and 

 the importance of Arbor Day constantly increases. Its great value, as 

 has been said, is not so much in the number of trees planted on Arbor 

 Day as in the tree sentiment created and stimulated by the Arbor Day 

 observances, which will be helpful in arresting the wasteful destruction 

 of our forests and lead on in due time, it is to be hoped, to all private 

 and public tree planting which our interests demand. 



ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF ARBOR DAY. 



The first to call attention in this country, in an 

 impressive way, to the value and absolute need of 

 trees their value not merely on account of their 

 beauty or their adaptation for purposes of orna- 

 mental planting and mechanical utility, but for 

 their connection as forests with climatic influ- 

 ences, with the flow of streams, and their conse- 

 quent connection with the large interests of 

 agriculture and commerce, in short, with the 

 general welfare of all classes of people was 

 that eminent scholar and wise observer, Mr. 

 George P. Marsh, for many years our worthy representative at the 

 courts of Italy and Turkey. His residence in those older countries was 

 calculated to draw his attention to the subject as it would not have 

 been drawn had he always lived in his native land. * 



Ours was a remarkably well- wooded country. From Maine to the 

 Gulf and from the Atlantic coast to the Alleghanies stretched an 

 almost continuous forest, which at the beginning of white settlements 



