TREES AND TREES. 
Trees, like the rocks, have written the history of the 
ages; they are also their own chronologists, and some 
now standing have, during a period of ninety genera- 
tions of men, marked off each year in their own great 
bodies more legibly than it could have been written in 
a book. The tree is the most highly organized of plant 
bodies ; it possesses greater longevity and attains larger 
dimensions than any other object; but great age does 
not impair its usefulness, nor size mar its symmetry of 
proportion. It is a thing of grace and beauty from the 
time, as a plantlet, it strikes its little radicle into the 
earth in search of sustenance, and lifts the delicate 
plumule from its cotyledonous bed to live a life in air 
and sunshine. 
No other object combines use and beauty in such 
infinite proportion. It furnishes us fuel and yields us 
food; it shelters man and beast from wind and storm, 
and shields them from the rays of the noonday sun. In 
all ages it has furnished the chief material for building 
and adorning men’s homes, as it also enters largely into 
nearly all the industries of civilization ; and yet, with all 
its manifold uses, we love it better for its beauty’s sake 
and for the pleasant associations that so often cluster 
