34- TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



In Italy, too, the grand work of restoring trees to those rocks 

 stripped naked by the men of the dark ages, has been not only 

 undertaken but actually done. Prince Demidoff, of Russia, says 

 that the Grand Duke Leopold II., of Tuscany, has planted trees, 

 shrubs and plants on his mountains where nearly all had disap- 

 peared, except here and there an ancient oak of eight hundred 

 years of age, which, through veneration, had been spared — " wood- 

 man, spare that tree" — that he has clothed his old mountains 

 with ffty millions of trees, shrubs and plants. 



England is indefatigable in this grand line of operation. She 

 has for a long time succeeded in renewing her forests ; and indeed 

 you well know that she, to her credit, has for centuries had an 

 entire system of laws to save her forests. She has had the worth 

 of her money out of all this care. Her thousand sea giants, her 

 fleet, have been built and maintained by her forests. Now indeed 

 she has entered upon a new economy on a scale of greatness — I 

 mean her iron marine, which already makes her oaks look shrubby 

 in comparison ! There are no oak trees near seven hundred feet 

 long to make keels for her Leviathan. There are no trees 

 too large to build her cutters. Nor does Britain want wood to 

 cook and warm her. Down below, in the cellar of the world, 

 where God put the primitive forests and compressed them into 

 coal, we descend for our fuel. Some say truly, that while Eng- 

 land has a goodly quantity in her cellar, that Uncle Sam's coal 

 cellar is considerable larger than all England — her coal cellar 

 included ! Our house is large. We want a great cellar. We 

 want good and great relations and friends. We want as many 

 good and great men as can occupy a farm four thousand miles 

 wide by nearly three thousand long, and which must be pieced 

 out by good will and fair purchase too. Let posterity put a finis 

 to this sentence ! 



Relations sometimes quarrel hard, but those who know no blood 

 in common, fight harder; the fight of the latter, a Voutrance — the 

 former often return to friendship. With one tongue, with one 

 view — glory in agriculture and the mechanic arts; with one his- 

 tory, with millions of assimilating points, with the red right hand 



