INTRODUCTORY. 
There are two points of view from which to regard trees — the 
mercantile and the aesthetic. The former is well exemplified in 
Dumbiedyke’s advice to Jock : “Jock, when yehaenaething else 
to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree ; it will be growing, Jock, 
when ye’re sleeping.” The canny Scot was thinking of the “ un- 
earned increment ” another generation might gather in, due 
to the almost unceasing activity of the vegetable cells in the 
manufacture of timber. The other view was expressed by “ the 
Autocrat of the Breakfast-table ” in a letter to a friend : “ When- 
ever we plant a tree we are doing what we can to make our 
planet a more wholesome and happier dwelling-place for those 
who come after us, if not for ourselves.” But, after all, it is the 
trees that have been planted by Nature that give the greatest 
pleasure apart from commercial considerations — the lonely 
Pine, that grows in rugged grandeur on the edge of the escarp- 
ment where its seed was planted in the crevice by the wind ; 
the Oak that grows outside the forest, where a squirrel or a jay 
dropped the acorn, and where the young tree had room all its 
life to throw out its arms as it would ; the little cluster of Birches 
that springs from the ferns and moss of the hillside. All trees 
so grown develop an individuality that is not apparent in their 
fellows of the timber forest ; and however we may delight in 
the peace and quiet of the forest, with its softened light and 
cool fragrant air, we can there only regard the trees in a mass. 
B 
