142 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



The Greeks with their high poetic sense peopled the forests and groves 

 and even separate trees with a supernatural and half-supernatural population 

 of nymphs and satyrs and gods, and born of their conception have come to us 

 the most beautiful and entrancing poetry of myth and fable that have en- 

 riched human literature. 



The Roman adapted but somewhat coarsened the poetical conceptions of 

 the Greeks touching the relation of forest and grove to the spiritual side of 

 man, and in accordance with their more practical genius turned it to practical 

 effect. It was in a grove that Numa Pompilius, the first of her thoughtful 

 kings, was said to have met his Egeria and the ''Bosca Sacra" is still pointed 

 out today to the credulous. 



Among our own ancestors the forest was held in equal awe, and the grove 

 in equal reverence. The poetical conceptions of the Greeks and the Romans, 

 however, were changed to suit their heavier and duller intelligence. Thor 

 and \^'oden, and the thunderous hierarchy of Scandinavia supplanted in their 

 imaginations the more graceful and ethereal conceptions of the south; but the 

 priests of their religion celebrated their awful rites under the shade of the 

 oaks which clad the hills of the north. 



If it should appear that this discussion of the forest is too fanciful to be 

 of practical service in a movement in which the more practical and material 

 use is the chief motive, it may be answered that after all the poetical is but a 

 further and higher development of the practical and that it is a more inspiring 

 power in that while the practical relates only to the lower motives of the in- 

 dividual, that which touches the sentiment has a more far reaching and un- 

 selfish result. If sentiment is to be discarded in the name of the practical, let 

 every man get all he can at no matter what sacrifice of others, but even pa- 

 triotism is founded on a sentiment which is high above the groveling personal 

 demands of physical life. It must be through a sentiment higher than that of 

 the self-seeker who destroys without remorse for his personal service the most 

 beautiful things in creation that the blessings of liberty and the contentment 

 of peace shall be attained. It must be through sentiment, the sentiment of 

 generosity, of philanthropy and of patriotism, that those who have secured the 

 advantages of education will extend them to others less favored. It must be 

 through sentiment that man's mind shall be extended to take in the great con- 

 ception of his duty to promote the welfare of his fellow man and uplifted to 

 take in the yet higher conception of his duty to the Supreme Being who has 

 clothed the mountains with the majesty and the hills with the glory of the 

 forest. 



As already stated, when Charles II founded the Royal Society of Great 

 Britain, one of his motives was to establish a great scientific society which 

 should scientifically promote the reforestation of England, for the disappear- 

 ance of its oak forests had already become a public menace and it was at the 

 instance of this society that John Evelyn wrote his great essay on forestry. 

 In this work he alludes to the respect with which this subject is discussed by 

 the great classical writers, and he deplores the indifference with which the 

 English race regarded it. "Men seldom plant trees," he says in his preface, 

 "till they begin to be wise; that is, till they grow old and find by experience 

 the prudence and the necessity of it." And he recalls how "When Ulysses, 

 after a ten year's absence, was returned from Troy, and coming home found his 

 aged father in the field i)lanting trees, he asked him why, being now so far 

 advanced in years, he would put himself to the fatigue and labor of planting 

 that which he was never likely to enjoy the fruits of, the good old man 

 (taking him for a stranger) gently replied, 'I plant, against my son Ulysses 

 coming home.' " 



I think it may be said of nations as John Evelyn said it of men, that they 

 rarely plant until they begin to be wise. 



