252 A YEAR IN AGRICULTURE 



TREES IN THE LANDSCAPE 



Beauty and utility. Goethe 's remark, that ' ' The beautiful 

 must be taken care of; the useful will take care of itself." 

 is to a large extent true to-day. The American people are 

 slow to pay the price for beauty, especially in landscape art. 

 "We are entering upon a period, however, when the esthetic 

 aspects of our surroundings are beginning to occupy our 

 attention. Forestry is not an esthetic art, but an industrial 

 one, the object of which is similar to agriculture; namely, 

 the management of the soil for the production of wood crops. 

 Yet the natural beauty, the sylvan charm, and the woodsy 

 flavor of a forest readily suggest the esthetic element which 

 stimulates our artistic sense. It will be impossible to develop 

 a satisfactory country life without conserving the beauty of 

 the landscape, and developing the people to the point of 

 appreciating it. 



The forest an element of beauty in the landscape. Both 

 the artistically kept park of the city and the natural neglected 

 forest of the open country contribute the largest element to 

 the picture in the landscape. The forest furnishes the back- 

 ground against which the farm home scenes show most at- 

 tractively. The broken sky-line of the trees, the variation in 

 form and color of the leaves, the massing of shrubs at the 

 borders of the forests, the seasonal changes of the foliage 

 all are details which the landscape gardener seeks to imitate 

 in his efforts to give natural beauty to a bit of ground. 



The call of the forest. People are naturally drawn to the 

 forests for rest, recreation, and the satisfaction which its 



