78 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



FIELD LIVE OAK. 



(Quereus agrifolia.) 



1 



"The green trees whispered low and mild; 



It was a sound of joy ! 

 They were my playmates when a child, 

 And rocked me in their arms so wild ! 

 Still they looked at me and smiled 



As if I were a boy." — Longfellow. 



f | ^HIS robust round-topped evergreen oak of the fields, 

 as its specific name implies, is already associated with 

 agricultural lands, and the rural scenery of a thou- 

 sand happy homes; and it is a greater joy still to know that 

 myriads more will throng these peaceful shades as the roll- 

 ing years move on, ever more and more endeared to the 

 hearts of a people, as pleasant home associations multiply 

 and cluster around them. Childhood, manhood, indeed all 

 animated nature, to a great extent at least, is the resultant 

 impress of environment. Therefore, is it no ordinary boon 

 to be born and reared beneath grand and sturdy embowering 

 trees — trees of wood only to some, it is sadly true — but the 

 charmed "wild woods" to others, and to your children, with 

 all the romance, poetry, and divine philosophy of another 

 Eden aglow in their hearts and eyes, more hallowed than 

 Druid ever held, or sacred than bard ever sung! 



Would any, then, wantonly fall far below the barbarian's 

 appreciation, sink in this world's forever, adown the abyss 

 of a dark and dismal Avemus, over which no bird of 

 heaven ever yet safely flew; or, perchance, instigated some- 

 what from that other place, go to lift up the ax against 

 the goodly trees of house and home; let in the lonely and 

 the dreary, the bleak or burning desert, on home-life, its 

 intro and retrospections; slay soul, by devastating heart and 

 desolating head, until little is left save the semblance of a 

 man? If so, go thy way, slay the grand and noble trees, 

 and say to the vile and imbecile shrub and bramble, " Come, 

 thou, and rule over us." Or, rather, let us not go on always 

 hothousing their lives and ideas of nature, in a word, nar- 

 rowing down associations to puerile and artificial human 

 perversions, or recreations, and their disorderly limitations, 

 low, lower, and lowest, lest we "educate" (?) the image and 

 likeness of a god into that of a snob or sentimental dunce. 

 Trees by their presence do preeminently ennoble mankind, 

 and though they were only one of a thousand ways and 

 means, the wise can never afford to dispense with any avail- 



