2 66 ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 



D 



TALKS ON TREES. 



FROM " THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE." 



ON'T you want to hear me talk trees a little now? That is one of my 

 specialties. 



I want you to understand, in the first place, that I have a most intense, pas- 

 sionate fondness for trees in general, and have had several romantic attach- 

 ments to certain trees in particular. 



****** * * * * 



I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the fields, 

 where they are alive, holding their green sunshades over our heads, talking to 

 us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with 

 that sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but limited organisms, which 

 one sees in the brown eyes of oxen, but most in the patient posture, the out- 

 stretched arms, and the heavy-drooping robes of these vast beings endowed 

 with life, but not with soul, which outgrow us and outlive us, but stand help- 

 less, poor things! while Nature dresses and undresses them, like so many 



full-sized, but under-witted children. 



***# ****** 



Just think of applying the Linnaean system to an elm! Who cares how 

 many stamens or pistils that little brown flower, which comes out before the 

 leaf, may have to classify it by? What we want is the meaning, the character, 

 the expression of a tree, as a kind and as an individual. 



There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if well marked, 

 is probably embodied .in the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for in- 

 stance, and we find it always standing as a type of strength and endurance. I 

 wonder if you ever thought of the single mark of supremacy which distinguishes 

 this tree from those around it? The others shirk the work of resisting gravity; 

 the oak defies it, It chooses the horizontal direction for its limbs so that their 

 whole weight may tell, and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, so that 

 the strain may be mighty enough to be worth resisting. You will find, that, in 

 passing from the extreme downward droop of the branches of the weeping wil- 

 low to the extreme upward inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep 

 nearly half a circle. At 90 the oak stops short; to slant upward another 

 degree would mark infirmity of purpose; to bend downwards, weakness of or- 

 ganization. The American elm betrays something of both ; yet sometimes, as 

 we shall see, puts on a certain resemblance to its sturdier neighbor. 



It wont do to be exclusive in our taste about trees. There is hardly one 

 of them which has not peculiar beauties in some fitting place for it. I remem- 

 ber a tall poplar of monumental proportions and aspect, a vast pillar of glossy 

 green, placed on the summit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the country 

 round. A native of that region saw fit to build his house very near it, and, 

 having a fancy that it might blow down some time or other, and exterminate 

 himself and any incidental relatives who might be " stopping" or "tarrying" 

 with him, also laboring under the delusion that human life is under all cir- 



