46 



THE UTILITY OF FORESTS. 



lives. Its influence was manifested in their manners and cus 

 tLQiis and conA'ersation. It made men more thouglitful and less 

 talkative and superficial; it furnished the inspiration for many 

 of their great works of prose and poetr^' ; and it breathed into 

 them a spirit of freedom and independence. 



Every city has its parks which were made and are kept 

 up largely for their artistic beauty. Xo one should underesti- 

 mate the value of woodlands which are maintained for their 

 esthetic effects. Those whose lives must be largely spent on 

 paved streets between walls of buildings find a complete and 

 refreshing change in the shaded parks and are benefitted to the 

 extent of their power to appreciate such surroundings. Nat- 

 ural forests, where there is no touch of the artificial, have a 

 greater effect upon character; and what the parks are in a 

 small way the virgin forests are in a much larger way. 



]\Iany persons do not know the forest nor understand its 

 meaning. It has been said that no one can really know the 

 forest without feeling the gentle influence of one of the kindli- 

 est and strongest parts of nature. Neither those persons wHo 

 regard it as a collection of standing timber which can be meas- 

 ured and sawed into lumber, nor those who look upon it as a 

 place overgrown with thickets of thorns and populated with 

 dangerous and repulsive reptiles, insects, and other animals, 

 nor yet those who claim to admire it from a distance and speak 

 of it in terms of false sentiment, have really known it. To 

 know the forest it is requisite that one should live in it, eat and 

 sleep in it, drink water from its springs, gather fruits from its 

 Yiaes and trees, climb its mountains, follow its trails, and 

 bathe in its streams ; that one should know something of the 

 creatures that live in it; and that one shoifld imbibe its spirit. 



Upon some the forest has a fascinating effect — an influence 

 that cannot be expressed in word^. but which is capable of 

 driving out every frivolous thought and stirring every deep 

 emotion. Those persons will know what this inexpressible in- 

 fluence is who have sat alone upon some mossy boulder or fallen 

 tree trunk in a remote forest, or have awakened at the dead of 

 night and watched the shadows that were cast by the light of a 

 low-flickering camp fire and listened to the weird, htmian-like 



