246 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



even in a lifetime, to attempt to solve the 

 problems of a forest ! It is far more satisfactory 

 to study ten oaks for ten years than gallop 

 on horseback through a grove of ten thousand. 

 If you must satisfy the modern mania for num- 

 bers, take to counting the leaves. It needs but 

 a few trees to give you one million or more. 

 What has just been said of content is something 

 more than a catchy phrase. 



There are other than laboratory methods of 

 studying Nature, and he is lacking who can sit 

 at the foot of an old tree and get no hints of 

 what the tree signifies as part of the world's 

 stupendous whole. It is something more than 

 fuel or lumber, for it is the living tree with 

 which he is or ought to be dealing. How very 

 different, as a specimen impression, one of a 

 hundred, are the trunks of our deciduous forests! 

 It is only the oaks that offer me a comfortable 

 resting-place on their roots. They offer both 

 seats and backs of a very easy chair, but the 

 beeches and birches, backs only. The curiously 

 twisted roots, with deeply grooved bark, like 

 models of the Colorado canon, extend in many 

 directions from the oaks of my home hill-side, 



