On the Fence 65 



ment. Those who have read the chapters on 

 reclamation can see the nature of the ground 

 without repeating the description. I have oak, 

 ash, sycamore, beech, alder, Lombardi poplar, 

 chestnut, Scotch fir, Austrian pine, American 

 cedar, and two of the spruce family. We may 

 infer the situation from the fact that every one of 

 these was required to meet some varying necessity 

 in the scheme. Without one failure, I cannot but 

 feel that I know something about trees. Yet this 

 is my first and only experience in studying and 

 planting them. I think the secret is in my 

 sympathy with the trees, which have eloquent 

 ways of their own to tell what they want. I can 

 never see even another man's tree unhappy 

 without a wish to go and help it, which may often 

 be vitally done in a few minutes. We all know 

 what it is to have a sick cow or a sick horse. Why 

 not a sick tree ? It is a live thing, and has its 

 ailments, organic, parisitic, climatic and accidental. 

 It is obviously grateful for relief, and for anything 

 I know, a proper subject of conscious pathology. 

 Then I love the trees because they make the world 

 beautiful, and I study them because, in a situation 

 like ours, they afford a test of man's fitness for the 

 privilege of a place on the face of the earth. It 

 is a sound test, and judged by it, the great bulk 

 of the Irish people ought to move at once to some 

 easier sphere, less conditioned by intelligent 

 activity. The first great mistake of the Irish race 

 was their eviction from the Garden of Eden, and 

 they suffer the more from it because of their 



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