An Old-fashioned Garden 137 



unfamiliar shrubs, however showy, to a 

 gooseberry hedge or a lilac thicket with 

 song-sparrows and a cat-bird hidden in its 

 shade. We have been unwise in this too 

 radical change. We have abolished bird- 

 music in our eagerness for color, gaining a 

 little, but losing more. We have paid too 

 dear, not for a whistle, but for its loss. But 

 it is not too late. Carry a little of the home 

 forest to our yards, and birds will follow it. 

 And let me here wander to an allied matter, 

 that of the recently-established Arbor Day. 

 What I have just said recalls it. 



To merely transplant a tree, move it from 

 one spot to another, where perhaps it is less 

 likely to remain for any length of time than 

 where it previously stood, is, it seems to me, 

 the very acme of folly. The chances are 

 many that the soil is less suitable, and so 

 growth will be retarded, and the world is 

 therefore not one whit the better off. There 

 is far too much tree-planting of this kind 

 on Arbor Day. In many an instance a plot 

 of ground has been replanted year after 

 year. I fancy we will have to reach more 

 nearly to the stage of tree appreciation before 

 Arbor Day will be a pre-eminent success. 

 12* 



