ARBOR DAY. 1 7!> 



ARBOR DAY EXCERPTS. 



WHAT A TREE IS. 



An unknown author says : 



To many men a tree is known only in its commercial 

 point of view ; it is so many feet of uncut timber, or so 

 many pecks of nuts; but the man who lives close to 

 Nature learns to know it differently. 



Yon oak, writes the German Lichte, which grows be- 

 side my farm-house, was planted an acorn two centuries 

 ago by my ancestor. Five generations' have been bora and 

 died beneath it. As I look up into its protecting shadow, 

 or hear its solemn whisper, can I doubt that its life has 

 some mysterious connection with that of my family, and 

 that, in its dumb way, it shares our joys and our 

 sorrows? 



The hunters and trappers in the Appalachian moun- 

 tains speak of trees precisely as they do of human beings ; 

 this one is "good-humored and friendly;" that, "cantan- 

 kerous and surly." The black balsam, they aver, knows a 

 dark secret, and grows only on bare, solitary peaks, "as if 

 it had a murder to think of," while the pecan tree is fond 



