IX. THE DECIDUOUS TREES IN WINTER 
“Vet lower bows the storm. The leafless trees 
Lash their lithe limbs, and with majestic voice 
Call to each other through the deepening gloom.” 
—J. G. Holland (Bitter-sweet). 
Largest of living things, and longest of life are the trees. 
They have .dominated the life of the greater part of the 
habitable earth by the sheer vigor of their growth. They 
have gone far toward making the world a fit place for us to 
live in. Our ancestors were woodsmen. The forests pro- 
vided them homes and shelter and food. The plants we now 
raise in fields, and the animals we keep in stock pens, they 
found growing or running wild in and about the borders of 
the woods. The pioneers of our race in America were 
woodsmen. When they entered the states of the upper 
Mississippi Valley, they passed by the rich prairies and 
settled in the less fertile lands of the wooded hills. They 
wanted fuel and shelter and water. They sought for trees 
and springs: finding these, they trusted to find with them 
all else needful for a living. 
The trees themselves contributed largely of the materials 
needed for the beginnings of human culture. A club for a 
weapon, a sharpened stick for an instrument of tillage, a 
hollowed log for a boat, and a sheet of bark for a roof—these 
were among the earliest of the agencies employed by man in 
mollifying and bettering his environment. It is a far cry 
from these few crude tree products to the numberless manu- 
factured products of the present day. Our need of tree 
products has multiplied inordinately, but our ways of getting 
these have become circuitous. When an implement or a 
utensil of wood is placed in our hand, all shaped and polished 
and varnished, we scarcely think of the trees as its source. 
qI 
