THE PRESERVATIOlSr OF TREES. 19 



to Ward Beecher or Tyng in the piilpit ; but the press multiplies 

 their best thoughts and most forcible expressions at the rate of ten 

 to twenty thousand copies per hoxir ; and its issues are within the 

 reach of every industiious family. Any American farmer, who 

 has two hands and knows how to use them, may, at fifty years of 

 age, have a better library than King Solomon ever dreamed of, 

 though he declared that " of making of many books there is no 

 end ;" any intelligent farmer's son may have a better knowledge of 

 Nature and her laws when twenty years old than Aristotle or Pliny 

 ever attained. The Steam Engine, the Electric Telegraph, and the 

 Power Press, have brought knowledge nearer to the huml)lest cabin 

 than it was, ten centuries since, to the stateliest mansion ; let the 

 cabin be careful not to disparage or repel it. To arrest the rush of 

 our youth to the cities, we have only to diffuse what is best of the 

 cities throughout the country ; and this the latest triumphs of civili- 

 zation enable us easily to do. A home irradiated by the best 

 thoughts of the' sages and heroes of all time, even though these be 

 compressed within a few rusty volumes, cheered by the frequent 

 arrival of two or three choice periodicals, and surrounded by such 

 floral evidences of taste and refinement as are within the reach of 

 the poorest owner of the soil he tills, will not be spurned as a 

 prison by any youth not thoroughly corrupted and depraved. 



But thousands of farmers are more intent on leaving money and 

 lands to their children than on informing and enriching their 

 minds. They starve their souls in order to pamper their bodies. 

 They grudge their sons that which would make them truly wise, 

 in order to provide them with what can at best but make them rich 

 in corn and cattle, while poor in manly purpose and generous ideas. 



— It may seem presumptuous in me to speak to you of the pres- 

 ervation and diffusion of Trees in a State so new as yours, and of 

 whose alternations of hill and valley, forest and prairie, you know 

 so much and I so little. But there are laws everywhere potent, 

 needs everywhere felt, and errors very generally committed ; and 

 of these last the most pervading is the reckless extermination of 

 Trees. It is not peculiar to this continent ; for France and Spain, 

 Italy and Portugal, have for the most part been denuded of forests, 

 and sufier for it not only in the scarcity of Timber and Fuel, but in 

 the severity and duration of their drouths, the fierceness and 

 devastations of their gales, the violence and aggravation of their 

 floods. All of them have timber on their rugged, sterile mo\in- 



