CHAPTER SEVEN 



MISCELLANEOUS 

 TREES 



Tree in Winter. What a beautiful, wonderful, useful thing is 

 a tree ! Look at one as it stands outlined against the winter sky. 

 How substantial are its trunk and branches ! It is hard to realize 

 that this solid body is built up from the invisible air, yet so it is. 

 Only one part in one hundred of dry wood is derived from the soil ; 

 the other ninety-nine parts are derived from the air. Half of the 

 substance is carbon; the remainder is chiefly oxygen and hydrogen 

 with a little nitrogen. . 



Tree in Summer. Consider the tree in summer. There are 

 hundreds and thousands of leaves, 

 busy in a factory very unlike the 

 noisy ones of man. What a wonder- 

 ful amount of work they do ! Grow- 

 ing, they prepare food for the tree, 

 and make a shade grateful to man 

 and beast ; fallen, they serve as a blan- 

 ket to keep the earth warm and moist, 

 and form mold and humus to enrich 

 the soil. 



With all his sciences, man cannot understand exactly the pro- 

 cesses of their work nor the power by which sap mounts to the 

 topmost leaf on the tree fifty or a hundred or three hundred feet 

 from the ground, 



279 



A SYCAMORE TREE IN SUMMER 

 AND IN WINTER 



