ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 301 



harvest long in maturing. The tree-planter can appreciate the apothegm, 

 "To patiently work and wait, year after year, for the attainment of some far- 

 off end, shows a touch of the sublime, and implies moral no less than mental 

 heroism." 



Clinton, Conn. B. G. NORTHROP. 



ARBOR DAY. 



OUR modern institution Arbor Day is a public acknowledgment of our 

 dependence upon the soil of the earth for our daily, our annual, bread. 

 In recognition of the same fact the Emperor of China annually plows a furrow 

 with his own hand, and in the same significance are the provisions in the 

 ancient law of Moses, to give the land its seven-year Sabbath, as well as to 

 man his seventh day for rest and recreation. Our observance is a better one, 

 because it calls on all, and especially on the impressible learners in the schools 

 to join in the duty which we owe to the earth and to all mankind, of doing 

 what each of us can to preserve the soil's fertility, and to prevent, as long as 

 possible, the earth, from which we have our being, from becoming worn out 

 and wholly bald and bare. And we do this by planting of any sort, if only by 

 making two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, and by learning 

 to preserve vegetation. We give solemnity to this observance by joining in it 

 on an appointed day, high and low, old and young, together. 

 Vick's Magazine. 



DESTRUCTION OF THE FORESTS. 



SOME of the figures presented to the Forestry Congress, recently held at 

 Philadelphia, are, to say the least, impressive. From them it appears that the 

 woodland of the United States now covers 450,000,000 acres, or about twenty- 

 six per cent of the area. Of this not less than 25,000,000 acres are cut over 

 annually, a rate of destruction that will bring our forests to an end in eighteen 

 years, if there is no replanting. It was also stated that while the wood grow- 

 ing annually in the forests of the United States amounts to 12,000,000,000 cubic 

 feet, the amount cut annually is 24,000,000,000 cubic feet, and this does not 

 include a vast amount destroyed by fire. The country's supply of timber, 

 therefore, is being depleted at least twice as fast as it is being reproduced, and 

 this is another way of showing that a timber famine is approaching rapidly. It 

 will be very serious when it comes, and it will not be relieved very easily or 

 very soon. 



Newspaper Extract, Xov., 1889. 



Mouldering and moss grown through the lapse of years in motionless beauty 

 stands the giant oak while those that saw its green and flourishing youth are 

 gone and forgotton. 



LONGFELLOW. 



