106 



PRIZE ESSAY. 



AKTIFICIAL PLANTING OF TREES;— ITS IMPORTANCE 

 AND BENEFITS. 



By Rev. John L. Russell of Salem. 



Nature, in its kindly ministrations, has clothed the surface of 

 the earth with vegetation. No spot of land, no outside of rocks, 

 nor even still or running waters, that are devoid of some kind of 

 plants. The enterprise of industrial art lays bare the long-cover- 

 ed strata of stone, railroad cuttings through sterile gravel-ridges, 

 swamps, bogs and miry places made firm by deposit of foreign sub- 

 stances, instantly assume new forms of vegetation, and the rude- 

 ness that labor has occasioned is covered with drapery of plant- 

 life. Myriads of minute plants, seen only in their distinct pro- 

 portions by the microscope, spring forth upon the smoothest 

 surfixces, others, of a larger growth, upon the ((uarried rock ; out 

 of their decay, grass and shrubs and even trees, in turn, rise, 

 and no waste of opportunity or of space is allowed in the economy 

 of nature. The hardest rocks, abraded thousands of years ago, 

 by the iceberg and polished by the drift of geological material, 

 and left covered by superstrata of earth, when exposed to light 

 and moisture and the atmospheric changes, yield some kinds of 

 alga or lichen^ from which the botanist foresees manifold uses to 

 future generations. He traces, too, in the sedimentary layers of 

 mud of the ditch or of the pond, wonderfully constructed vegeta- 

 bles, and anticipates from their agencies new fields of labor to 

 unborn nations, whose people shall " plant vineyards, and sow 

 fields, and dwell on the dry ground," which once were " standing 

 pools." To a benevolent Creator's will and power these most 

 minute agencies of nature ai-e made subservient, and no soil so ster- 

 ile which may not be converted by His wisdom into results benefi- 

 cial and important, and from whose lessons science is not enabled 

 to profit and to make practical application. 



This almost instantaneous presence of vegetation upon new, 

 artificially-created areas suggests a lesson of some importance. 

 It implies the need of such agencies in fitting this earth as a com- 

 fortable residence of men. The chemist analyzes the rock, the 

 solid ground, the semi-fluid mass of bog and mire, and detects in 

 them all some particular elements favorable to some peculiar sorts 

 of plants. He analyzes the plant and finds in turn secretions, 

 which act upon such substances, and which render them fit for 

 successive and higher orders. The results of combined observa- 

 tion and study encourage industry in new channels, and recom- 



