CULTURE OF TREES. 125 



grove chant their morning song, and trill their evening lay ; 

 and where the sweet voices and joyous sports of happy children 

 are heard and witnessed. For be it remembered, this is child- 

 hood's Eden — this its congenial home. This is heaven's 

 nursery, wherein to rear its choicest plants for an immortal 

 bloom. "While a kind Providence seems ever reluctant to com- 

 mit its offspring to the stiff formalities, the stinted sympathies, 

 the cold affections of the palatial prison, it bestows them in 

 larger measure, and with apparent delight, upon the open arms, 

 the gushing affections, the overflowing bosoms of sympathy and 

 love, which are to be sought in these sylvan homes. 



But we Avould present other considerations of more general 

 interest perhaps to our farmers, more pertinent to the occasion 

 and more in harmony with the purposes of our organization. 

 It is a well settled fact in physiology, that trees, forests, exert 

 a controlling influence upon the climate ; taming its wildness, 

 mitigating its rigors, neutralizing its repellant forces and mod- 

 erating its excesses. One of the most serious hindrances to the 

 farmer's success are the high winds which at times prevail 

 among us. They sweep over his cultivated fields, prostrating 

 his grass and his grain. They drive through his orchards, 

 twisting and breaking his trees, and forcing the fruit prema- 

 turely from the branches. They rage and howl in wintry blasts 

 over his fallow, dissipating its grasses and bearing away its soil. 

 Trees exert a no less powerful influence upon the climate in 

 relation to its dryness or humidity. Other obstacles to success- 

 ful farming, are the sharp droughts and deluging rains which 

 are becoming of so freq^uent occurrence, and which will increase 

 in frequency and severity as the country becomes more denuded 

 of its forests. Trees render more gradual and uniform the 

 evaporations from the earth's surface, by conducting through 

 their entire organism, — through roots, trunk, branches and 

 leaves, the moisture that lies below the reach of ordinary vege- 

 tation, to the atmosphere above ; which thus becoming over- 

 charged with moisture, returns it in dews and showers upon 

 the thirsty earth. Trees afford us protection from the tempest ; 

 disarming it of its force, and diverting the descending fluid from 

 our persons and dwellings. They are the natural pathway for 

 the lightning in its passage from the clouds to the earth ; from 

 its storehouse in the skies, to its depositories in the deep recesses 



