Public Parks. 49 



has undergone a marked change in consequence of the destruction 

 of the forests ;* viz., in the greater extremes of heat and cold, and in 

 the perennial flow of the springs. This is manifest in its influence 

 on man, in the altered character of the diseases, and also by the fact, 

 that many manufacturing establishments which, a quarter of a century 

 ago, had a water-power ample at all seasons to drive their machinery, 

 are now compelled to resort, during the summer months, to the 

 auxiliary aid of the steam-engine. 



Trees are the highest type of vegetable life, and in many 

 respects the greatest of living forms. What more imposing than one 

 of the these monarchs of the forest, like the Sequoia of the Nevada 

 Slope, towering up into the upper air for 400 feet, and with a shaft 30 

 feet or more in diameter at the base ! And then too, their antiquity. 

 How many generations of men have disappeared, since first the germ 

 of such a tree burst its seed-vessel ! Kit. North, than whom no one had 

 a keener eye to the grandeur of the external world, thus speaks of 

 these vegetable forms : 



'^ Trees are indeed the glory, the beautv and delight of nature. 

 The man who loves not trees — to look at them, to lie under them — 

 to climb up them (once more a school boy) — would make no bones 

 of murdering Mrs. Jefts. In what one imaginable attribute, that it 

 ought to possess, is a tree, pray, deficient? Light, shade, shelter, 

 coolness, freshness, music, all the colors of the rain-bow, dew and 

 dreams dropping through their umbrageous twilight, at eve or morn, 

 dropping direct — soft, sweet, soothing and restorative from heaven. 

 Without trees, how in the name of wonder could we have had houses, 

 ships, bridges, easy chairs or coffins, or almost any single one of the 

 necessaries of life. Without trees, one man might have been born 

 with a silver spoon in his mouth, but not another with a wooden 

 ladle. 



'•Tree, by itself, tree, 'such tents the patriarchs loved.' Ipse 

 nemus ' the brotherhood of trees ' — the Grove, the Coppice, the 

 Wood, the Forest — dearly and after a different fashion, do we love 

 you all ! And love you all we shall, while our dim eyes can catch 

 the glimmer, our dull ear the murmur of the leaves, or our imagination 

 hear at midnight the far-off' swing of old branches groaning in the 

 tempest. Oh ! is it not merry, also sylvan England } And, has not 

 Scotland, too, her old pine forests, blackening up her highland 



* It has been observed in Sweden, that the spring, in many districts where the forests have been 

 cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later than in the last century. — AsbjOrsen, Otn Shovene i Neye. 



