THE AGE-OLD OAKS 



WHENCE have they come for assemblage, the age-old 

 oaks? It may be that they have stepped out from 

 the Hall of Fame trees of the American Forestry 

 Association. It may be that they have some secret modes 

 cf communication, a language not audible, yet built up 

 through the centuries in potency. There they are, the 

 oaks that have sheltered armies, in their victorious marches 

 for the changing of human destiny, the oaks that have 

 nourished the heroes of the world's fame and fortune, the 

 oaks that have stood by and witnessed the inarch of 

 human progress and the rise and fall of dynasties, the 

 evolution and extinction of types of civilization. They 

 come from many lands weighted with years. They are the 



are in caucus to pass upon the tyranny of force over forest, 

 of industry over natural existence, of the factory over the 

 forest. They are there to tell the story of Olympus, and 

 to recite the glories of a Hellenic age. They are there to 

 tell of the symboled sculptures of the Greeks and the 

 far-faring ships of the Phoenecians. They are there in 

 assemblage to plead for what, to plead for the rights of 

 all trees, for the dignity of age and ornament against 

 vulgar use; to plead for the streams dried up through 

 the slaughter of the cloud-wooing trees; to plead for the 

 mountains left bare by the double-edged axes of the wood 

 choppers; to plead for the rights of the soil, that it shall 

 not be made bare and waste and desolate; to plead for 



Before Basking Ridge took its place in the world this Oak stood there. The people ot this New Jersey 

 town can trace the tree's history for four hundred years, but the church is only two hundred years old. 

 It has just celebrated that event. Miss Margaret S. Hitchcock, of Morristown, and Mrs. William D. 

 Baneker, of Basking Ridge, nominate the tree for a place in the Hall of Fame which the American 

 Forestry Association is compiling of trees with a history. The tree has a circumference of fifteen and a 

 half feet six feet above the ground, and what a history it could tell could it but speak of the people who 

 have come and gone from that old church it guards so well. 



oaks of a thousand years ago. They are styled oaks, for 

 the concreteness of the title, but in the assembly of the 

 giant oaks are found the cedars of Lebanon and those 

 mighty trees of California that have stood where they now 

 are amid earthquake and shock for ages, unaffected. There 

 are the oaks of the Druids from the morass of Ely. There 

 is the old Charter Oak and oh, so many others, wedded to 

 the rich facts of history. They are the oaks that have been 

 twined with mistletoe for ages past, amid whose branches 

 the orchids have found sheltering, to flaunt their gaudy 

 blossoms to the high winds. 



The assembly of the age-old oaks, what does it mean? 

 Peruse the program upon the smooth birch bark they 



climate against material conquest; to plead for the pres- 

 ervation and expansion of the mighty arboreal reaches in 

 which so many veterans have held their undisputed sway 

 through ages past. 



The age-old oaks are aroused and protesting. Let the 

 iconoclast beware, for as sure as day follows night, so 

 does desolation follow in the wake of desecration. So do 

 there come to pass the conditions of dearth and decay, 

 with material benefits languishing, when nature is violated 

 and the mighty forests stripped and the lands given 

 over to the fabrication instead of fruition. Let the 

 oaks be heard and their protests heeded! Reprinted from 

 the Baltimore American. 



