OUR BROTHERS, THE TREES 



roots into the human heart is known only 

 to those who have lived on intimate terms 

 with some of their sylvan brothers from 

 childhood. Nor can one measure the fine 

 spiritual losses of the man or woman who 

 has missed the individual tuition of single 

 trees or the higher education of a forest. 

 For every tree, in a greater or less degree, 

 is begirt with mystery, and lures the mind 

 beyond the close-cropped circle in which it 

 is too often tethered by the petty interests 

 of life. This influence was felt centuries 

 ago in the East, and finds quaint expression 

 in the Varaka Purana, which promises 

 heavenly bliss to the planter of certain trees. 

 "He never goes to hell," asserts the Purana, 

 "who plants an asyatha, or a pichumarda, or 

 a banian, or ten jessamines, or two pome- 

 granates, or a pachamra, or five mangoes." 



Even the superstitions of India show that 

 a tree in that country is regarded as some- 

 thing more than its wood-fibered body. Ac- 

 cording to one tradition, the holes in trees 

 are the doors through which the special 

 spirits of those trees pass, a fancy which finds 



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