1895.] ESSAYS. 101 



every fanner be persuaded that he can use his rough and waste laud 

 for uo better purpose than for the growth of trees. ]\Iuch of our soil 

 is unfit for pasturage or cultivation, which would raise forests, and 

 thereby would pi'oduce something of use to coming generations. It 

 has been said that he who makes two blades of grass grow where only 

 one grew before is a benefactor of his race ; and of all the pursuits 

 connected with the interests of mankind, what can be the source of 

 more true and disinterested happiness than the knowledge that one has 

 been instrumental in changing a waste and unproductive piece of land 

 into a scene of umbrageous and waving beauty ! Cicero speaks of tree 

 planting as the most delightful occupation of advanced life ; and Sir 

 Robert Walpole once said that among the various actions of his busy 

 life, none had given him so much satisfaction in the performance and 

 so much unsullied pleasure in the retrospect, as the planting with his 

 own hands many of those magnificent trees that now form the pride of 

 Houghton. 



But I need not seek in history for testimony in behalf of tree plant- 

 ing, for there must be some men and women in this audience who can 

 testify from personal experience of the joy and benefit of planting 

 trees. 



I appeal to those of you who have planted trees with your own 

 hands and watched their growth and expansion from day to day until 

 you have become familiar with every limb and all their varied aspects 

 in sunny and in stormy weather, to say whether you have not already 

 been paid a thousand times for setting them out. And as you now 

 walk beneath their cooling shade and see their limbs swaying grace- 

 fully over surrounding objects, and their majestic heads rising to 

 heaven, as if in supplication for blessings on the earth, do j'our hearts 

 not go out towards them with a feeling of tenderness and love known 

 only to a parent or a benefactor? 



