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FORESTRY FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 



BY BRISTOW ADAMS 



THE WIND AND THE TREES 



IRIENDS in so 

 many needs, 

 as the sturdy 

 trees are to 

 man, it is hard 

 to tell in just 

 what ways they 

 best serve him. 

 After they are 

 cut for use they 

 may shelter 

 him against the 

 storm and may warm and cheer him 

 before the open fire-place. But as stand- 

 ing trees in the forest, in the fields, 

 along the fence rows, and by the road- 

 side they are the best friends in all 

 plant life. They are comrades, too ; help- 

 ful comrades, each with as true a self as 

 a human friend, and each worth knowing 

 in all ways that we can know them. It is 

 quite as true with trees as it is with folks, 

 that the better we know them the better 

 we like them. 



One meets a person who causes a dis- 

 like from the first; if one takes pains to 

 try to overcome that dislike and to learn 

 to know what good points there may be, 

 the chances are that the dislike may turn 

 to a kindlier feeling, or at least that it 

 will grow less. Or one meets a person 

 to whom one is drawn from the very first 

 by the ties of a strong love ; ten chances to 

 one, the more one sees and knows of the 

 good in that person, the stronger will the 

 ties become. Try this, with either trees or 

 folks, and see if it does not work out ! 



MICHAUX, the great French botanist, 

 among the earliest to describe our 

 American forests, made the great mis- 

 take, it seems to me, of setting down in 

 cold black-and-white that our common 

 scrub pine, or Virginia pine, was to him 

 the most uninteresting tree that ever 

 grew. I've always felt a bit sorry for 

 poor little scrub pine ever since I read 

 the sentence that Michaux passed upon 

 it. For my part, I have ever had a tender 

 spot in my heart for the sturdy and cheer- 



ful ways of this tree, its ability to thrive 

 on poor land, its rapid growth, its power 

 to bear seed and start new little trees at 

 a very early age, its firm grip on gullied 

 hillsides to hold them from the washing 

 rains. But most of all I like the staunch 

 way it stands against the March winds, 

 and shunts the gales a-roaring upwards, 

 away from the many little negro cabins, 

 and even from the larger homes in 

 Maryland, Virginia, and southward. 



We have reason to know about this 

 tree, because the first house that we 

 built, the home in which the two little 

 boys were born, was in a clearing of 

 these scrub pines. The trees that we 

 cut away to make room for the house in 

 the early spring helped to warm us on 

 our hearth-altar during the following 

 winter; and the belt of pines left to the 

 northwest were a great defence against 

 the cold winter winds, and the boisterous 

 gusts of March. How much fuel they 

 saved it would be hard to say; but we 

 know well what a lull seemed to come in 

 the storms when we gained the leeward 

 of our little grove of scrubs. When the 

 snowflakes swirled dizzily over the open 

 fields, they dropped gently down behind 

 our screen of pines and blanketed the 

 garden against the bitter freezes of the 

 exposed hillsides. 



THUS, when March comes, I am 

 likely to think of trees and the wind, 

 and of the effects they have upon one 

 another. March winds are very hard on 

 the trees. March never has had a very 

 good name among the months. The 

 name by which we know it comes from 

 Mars, the war god, whose reign all of 

 us would like to see ended on earth 

 forever. It cannot be denied that March 

 is a wild and rough time o' year. The 

 old Saxon name was Rede-monath, or 

 rough month; it was also called Hlyd- 

 monath, or loud month, because it was so 

 boisterous. When the French Revolution 

 set out to reform everything, even the 

 calendar, it was Ventose, or windy month. 



