; 5 8 ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 



Specimen Programs. Port Henry, \. Y. Continued. 



landscape. The conscious enjoyment of natural beauty is a modern sentiment, but it is 

 from the association of Greek and Roman usage that " bays " and " laurels " derive their 

 modern significance. Apollo's tree, the bay, furnished the wreaths for Roman victors, at 

 their triumphs. The Greeks crowned with laurel the victors in the Pythian games and 

 with a wreath of wild olives the Olympic victors. 



All such facts, familiar to school boys, will acquire a kind of interest which they never 

 had before when those boys establish personal relations with trees and shrubs by planting 

 them and giving them names. When they watch to see how Bryant and Longfellow are 

 growing; whether Abraham Lincoln wants water, or Benjamin Franklin is drying up 

 whether Asa Gray puts out his leaves as early as last year, and whether Maria Mitchell 

 and Abigail Adams and Dorothea Dix hold in their ample and embowering arms as many 

 singing birds, as usual, they will discover that a tree may be as interesting as the squirrel 

 that skims along its trunk, or the thrush that calls from its leafy covert like a muezzin 

 from a minaret. 



It is pleasant to remember on Arbor Day that Bryant, our oldest American poet and 

 the father of our American literature, is especially the poet of trees. 



He grew up among the solitary hills of Western Massachusetts when the woods were 

 his nursery and the trees his earliest comrades. The solemnity of the forest breathes 

 through all his verse, and he had always, even in the city, a grave rustic air as of a man 

 who heard the bubbling brooks and to whom the trees told their secrets. His poems will 

 be so naturally read on Arbor Day that it will keep his memory green, and the poet of the 

 trees will become the familiar friend of American boys and girls who, by tender nurture 

 of the trees, will have learned to say with him : 



"Nay, doubt we not that under the rough rind, 

 In the green veins of their fair growth of earth, 

 There dwells a nature that receives delight 

 From all the gentle processes of life, 

 And shrinks from loss of being." 



Bryant liked to think of himself as associated with trees, and modestly forecasts his- 

 name blended with trees and the fruit so precious to all us American girls and boys, or 

 men or women. 



" Who planted this old apple tree ? 

 The children of that distant day. 

 Thus to some aged man shall say ; 

 And gazing on its mossy stem, 

 The gray-haired man shall answer them, 



A poet of the land was 'he. 

 Born in the rude but good old times, 

 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes, 

 On planting the apple tree." 



With every good wish for the boys and girls who will plant the trees, and for the trees 

 which they will plant, I am Very truly yours, 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 



From Hon. David Murray, ex-Secretary of Board of Regents of the University of 

 the State of New York. 



REGENTS' OFFICE, Albany, N. Y., April 10, 1889. 



MY DEAR SIR I am pleased to hear that you are preparing to celebrate Arbor Day 

 in some appropriate way. Nothing can be more fitting than for the scholars in our 

 schools to unite in exercises for the planting and protection of trees. The time has come 

 for us to concern ourselves with the preservation of our forests and the multiplication of 

 the trees, vines and shrubs which do so much to make the earth which we inhabit beau- 

 tiful and salubrious. 



I lived many years in Japan, which is one of the most lovely countries on the face of 

 the earth. Its beauty is largely due to the noble trees which everywhere line the roads 

 and envelop its surface. Its climate is warm and moist and therefore well adapted to- 

 the growth of luxuriant vegetation. But there can be no question that in a great measure 

 the thriving and kept groves and avenues of trees owe their continued existence to the 

 fostering care of the government. During a great part of the two hundred and fifty years 

 of the Shogun's government, it was a well-understood and definite regulation that, when- 

 ever a tree was cut down for any purpose, two others should be planted to take its place. 

 The effect of such a regulation is now apparent. In the great cities of Tokio, Kiots and 

 Osaka, every available space is filled with noble trees. Along the great government 

 roads, which lead through the islands, tall and graceful cedars in double rows line the 

 pathway and give both a cool shade and graceful vistas. I have driven through fifty miles 

 of such an avenue in going from Tokio to the burial place of the Shoguns of Nikko. 



What old and picturesque countries have been able to do, it now devolves on us to- 

 take timely measures to do. The forests of our country, which no long time ago were so- 

 abundant that they covered every fertile road, have been cut down, until many portions 



