WHAT TO PLANT. 61 



of our immense coal-fields as far as we may, 

 there will come a time of exhaustion. Formerly 

 we thought our forests as exhaustless as we now 

 think our coal-mines to be, and yet we are look- 

 ing upon an almost naked country where the 

 forests once darkened the land. But if what re- 

 mains is properly husbanded, and if forests are 

 planted on the hills and on the waste and un- 

 tillable lands, we can have, for all time to come, 

 all the lumber we need for the arts and for 

 construction purposes, and all the wood we 

 need for fuel, while at the same time we are so 

 maintaining the balance of the natural forces 

 as to secure the highest measure of health and 

 material prosperity. 



Not to speak of the particular merits of 

 others of the maple class, the rock or hard 

 maple, known also as the sugar-maple, deserves 

 special consideration. No tree, perhaps, com- 

 bines in itself more desirable qualities. No tree 

 excels it in beauty of form, in massive solidity 

 of appearance, none in beauty of foliage, espe- 

 cially when it puts on its robes of crimson 

 and gold in the autumn of the year. Then it 

 seems the very monarch of the trees. Its wood 



