4 ARBOR DAY 



the wider the range of knowledge, the more 

 secure is the great national commonwealth. The 

 intimate association of the schools with tree- 

 planting is fortunate in attracting boys and girls 

 to a love and knowledge of nature, and to a 

 respect for trees because of their value to the 

 whole community. 



The scheme for the inauguration of the holiday 

 in New York was issued by the Superintendent of 

 Public Instruction. It provided for simple and 

 proper exercises, the recitation of brief passages 

 from English literature relating to trees, songs about 

 trees sung by the children, addresses, and planting 

 of trees, to be named for distinguished persons of 

 every kind. 



The texts for such addresses are indeed as numer- 

 ous as the trees, and there may be an endless improve- 

 ment of the occasion, to the pleasure and the profit 

 of the scholars. They may be reminded that our 

 knowledge of trees begins at a very early age, even 

 their own, and that it usually begins with a close and 

 thorough knowledge of the birch. 



This, indeed, might be called the earliest service 

 of the trees to the child, if we did not recall the cradle 

 and the crib. The child rocking in the cradle is 

 the baby rocking in the tree-top, and as the child 

 hears the nurse droning her drowsy "rock-a-bye 

 baby," it may imagine that it hears the wind sighing 

 through the branches of the tree. To identify the 



