ter over the road than against the build- 

 ings or other trees that are behind them. 



The prevailing winds of any country 

 bend the trees largely in one direction. 

 In the vicinity of Chicago, where the 

 return trade winds blow day after day 

 from the southwest, we find the willows 

 of the prairie all bending their heads 

 gracefully to the northeast. 



The relations between trees and the 

 fertility of the country around them is 

 a matter of deep interest to man. Por- 

 tions of France have been productive 

 and afterwards barren because of the 

 abundance of the trees at first and their 

 having afterwards been cut down to 

 supply the wants of man, who desired 

 their material and the ground on which 

 they stood. The rivers of Michigan 

 are not navigable now in some in- 

 stances where once they were deep 

 with water. The destruction of the 

 forests to supply the lumber and furni- 

 ture markets of the world has caused 

 less rain to fall, and the snows of win- 

 ter which formerly lay late in spring 

 beneath the forests now melt at the re- 

 turn of the sun in the early months and 

 are swept with the rush of high water 

 away to the great lakes. Many of the 

 barren wastes in Palestine and other 

 countries, which in olden times blos- 

 somed as the rose, have lost their glory 

 with the destruction of their trees. 



Men have learned something of the 

 value of the trees to a fertile country 

 and the science of forestry has arisen, 

 not only to determine the means of 

 growing beautiful and useful trees, but 

 also to court the winds of heaven to 

 drop their fatness upon the soil. In 

 the state of Nebraska 800,000,000 

 planted trees invite the rain and the 

 state is blessed by the response. 



Man used to worship the forest. The 

 stillness and the solemn sounds of the 

 deep woods are uplifting to the soul 

 and healing to the mind. The great 

 gray trunks bearing heavenward their 

 wealth of foliage, the swaying of 

 branches in the breeze, the golden 

 shafts of sunlight that shoot down 

 through the noonday twilight, all tend 

 to rest the mind from the things of 

 human life and lift the thoughts to 

 things divine. 



The highest form of architecture prac- 



ticed on earth is the Gothic, which holy 

 men devised from contemplation of 

 the lofty archings of trees and perpetu- 

 ated in the stone buildings erected to 

 God in western Europe through the 

 centuries clustering around the thir- 

 teenth. 



Trees afford hiding and nesting 

 places for many birds and animals. 

 Their cooling shelter comforts the cat- 

 tle; they furnish coursing-places among 

 their branches for the sportive climb- 

 ing-animals, and their tender twigs give 

 restful delight to the little birds far out 

 of reach of any foe. 



Man has always used the trees for 

 house building; his warmth is largely 

 supplied from fires of wood and leaves; 

 from the days when Adam and Eve did 

 their first tailoring with fig leaves, the 

 trees have been levied upon for articles 

 of clothing till now the world is sup- 

 plied with hats of wood, millions of 

 buttons of the same material are worn, 

 and the wooden shoes of the peasantry 

 of Europe clump gratefully over the 

 ground in acknowledgment of the debt 

 of mankind to the woods. 



Weapons of all sorts, in all ages, have 

 been largely of wood. Houses, furni- 

 ture, troughs, spoons, bowls, plows, and 

 all sorts of implements for making a 

 living have been fashioned by man 

 from timber. Every sort of carriage 

 man ever devised, whether for land or 

 water travel, depended in its origin 

 upon the willing material the trees have 

 offered. Although we now have 

 learned to plow the seas with prow of 

 steel and ride the horseless carriage 

 that has little or no wood about it, yet 

 the very perfection of these has arisen 

 from the employment of wood in count- 

 less experiments before the metal thing 

 was invented. 



Our daily paper is printed from the 

 successors of Gutenberg's wooden type, 

 upon what seems to be paper, but is in 

 reality the ground-up and whitened 

 pulp of our forest trees. Our food is 

 largely of nuts and fruits presented 

 us by the trees of all climes, which are 

 yet brought to our doors in many in- 

 stances by wooden sailing-vessels, 

 whose sails are spread on spars from 

 our northern forests. 



The baskets of the white man and 



234 



