THE“GRIPLEY “CREE: 
CHARLES COKE WOODS, PH.D. 
ATTER fer se is an evidence of 
mind. Every material thing 
enshrines a thought. Essen- 
tial nature has no superfluities. 
To the thinker everything means some- 
thing. In nature nothing happens. 
Everything is ordered. There can be 
no portrait of a landscape without a 
painter. There can be no landscape 
without a maker. 
The visible forms that nature takes 
may be changed. Her invisible forms 
ate .changeless. The search for the 
changeless is the great and delightful 
task of art, literature, science, philoso- 
phy and religion. The ultimate in 
nature and in art is divine. The per- 
manent principle survives the fleeting 
form. Nature’s principles are relatively 
few. Her forms are multifarious. Tree 
hie vis*true lifes Its naturale Vitis 
therefore true. Nature’s garb may be 
odd. It may even be deformed. But 
her inner self is never false. Sap, fiber, 
leaf, blossom, fruit; this is nature’s 
apocalypse. It is Queen Beauty’s pro- 
gressive revelation. 
Trees usually grow singly. Under 
certain conditions they may = as 
naturally grow otherwise. The un- 
usual is not necessarily the unnatural. 
Nature’s resources are vast. She may 
at any time manifest herself in an un- 
familiar form. 
A triplet tree grows on what is 
known as ‘‘Green’s Ranch” in Cowley 
County, Kansas. The ranch is located 
five miles northeast of Arkansas City. 
The trees are about three hundred 
yards from the west bank of the 
Walnut River. They range in a line 
running north and south. They are 
between forty-five and fifty feet high. 
The first two on the north are eighteen 
inches apart. The third tree standing 
at the south end of the row is fifteen 
feet from the middle one. They are 
water elms, and average about three 
and one-half feet in girth. The tree 
standing at the north end of the row is 
hollow at the base and, leaning over 
southward intersects the central tree 
two feet from the ground; thence it ex- 
tends to the one at the south end of 
the row, and intersects it with a limb 
from either side twelve feet above the 
ground. The segment of the circle 
described by the leaning tree is about 
twenty feet. At the points where the 
cross tree intersects the other two, it is 
not merely a case of contiguity, but of 
actual identification. 
Another feature of the leaning tree 
is that half way between its base and 
the trunk of the second, and on the 
lower side is an unsightly knot about 
as large as a half bushel measure. 
Half way between the center tree and 
the one on the south, and on the under 
side of the leaning tree is another lump 
similar to the first, about half the size. 
These unsightly warts appear to have 
been produced by a congestion of sap 
in the tissue of the intersecting tree. 
This triplet tree is a curiosity. It pre- 
sents a strange phenomenon in tree 
formation. But nature is everywhere 
full of mystery and surprises. 
COUNTRIES DEVOID OF TREES. 
NYONE who has traveled 
a) through the comparatively tree- 
less countries around the Med- 
iterranean, such as Spain, Sicily, 
Greece, northern Africa, and large 
portions of Italy, must fervently pray 
that our owncountry may be preserved 
163 
from so dismal a fate, says President 
Charles W. Eliot. It is not the loss 
of the forests only that is to be 
dreaded, but the loss of agricultural 
regions now fertile and populous, 
which may be desolated by the floods 
that rush down from the bare hills 
