128 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [18:3— Mch., 1921 



The dogwood berries furnish food for forty-seven different kinds 

 of birds during the fall and winter. If that isn't a good argument 

 for the dogwood will someone in this audience kindly tell me what is ? 



You may say this: "We have been told that people pick and 

 destroy so much dogwood that it is rapidly becoming extinct. 

 We don't want that kind of a tree for our national tree." Before 

 red, white and blue became our national colors did they mean 

 much to the colonists? Would they have thought anything of 

 cutting, tearing or tramping upon them? But what would we 

 think of a person who would do such a thing now? The same 

 thing would hold true if the dogwood became our national tree. 

 People would soon learn what a terrible thing it would be to harm 

 even one of its flowers. 



We people living around Washington and Baltimore should be 

 particularly fond of the dogwood. And why? Because literally 

 speaking it grows under our very noses. What good would it do 

 us to have the redwood of California for our national tree ? 



The dogwood has very little commercial value but this is all the 

 more favor in it. Why take a tree that has extensive commercial 

 value? Money plays too large a part in the lives of modem 

 Americans. Take the dogwood so we can make it a truly orna- 

 mental tree. The dogwood is a tree that stands for all that 

 America stands for — the white of the flowers for purity, the red of 

 the leaves and berries for valor and the whole tree for justice and 

 in closing I wish to say: 



These arguments were made by one, by me. 

 But it lies with you to elect the tree. 



Martha Mendall, 

 8B, Ross School, 

 Washington, D. C. 



THE HICKORY 



Friends and fellow-classmates, I have come before you to con- 

 vince you that the hickory is the tree that should be made our 

 national tree. Do you realize that the hickory is the only one of 

 the nine candidates that is an all American tree ; that natiire has 

 caused eleven of the twelve kinds of the hickory to grow in the 

 United States ? If nature has done this we can at least repay her 

 by selecting the hickory as our national tree. 



