ter over the road than against the build- 
ings or other trees that are behind them. 
The prevailing winds of any country 
bend the trees largely in one direction. 
In the vicinity of Chicago, where the 
return trade winds blow day after day 
from the southwest, we find the willows 
of the prairie all bending their heads 
gracefully to the northeast. 
The relations between trees and the 
fertility of the country around them is 
a matter of deep interest to man. Por- 
tions of France have been productive 
and afterwards barren because of the 
abundance of the trees at first and their 
having afterwards been cut down to 
supply the wants of man, who desired 
their material and the ground on which 
they stood. The rivers of Michigan 
are not navigable now in some in- 
stances where once they were deep 
with water. The destruction of the 
forests to supply the lumber and furni- 
ture markets of the world has caused 
less rain to fall, and the snows of win- 
ter which formerly lay late in spring 
beneath the forests now melt at the re- 
turn of the sun in the early months and 
are swept with the rush of high water 
away to the great lakes. Many of the 
barren wastes in Palestine and other 
countries, which in olden times blos- 
somed as the rose, have lost their glory 
with the destruction of their trees. 
Men have learned something of the 
value of the trees to a fertile country 
and the science of forestry has arisen, 
not only to determine the means of 
growing beautiful and useful trees, but 
also to court the winds of heaven to 
drop their fatness upon the soil. In 
the state of Nebraska 800,000,000 
planted trees invite the rain and the 
state is blessed by the response. 
Man used to worship the forest. The 
stillness and the solemn sounds of the 
deep woods are uplifting to the soul 
and healing to the mind. The great 
gray trunks bearing heavenward their 
wealth of foliage, the swaying of 
branches in the breeze, the golden 
shafts of sunlight that shoot down 
through the noonday twilight, all tend 
to rest the mind from the things of 
human life and lift the thoughts to 
things divine. 
The highest form of architecture prac- 
ticed on earth is the Gothic, which holy 
men devised from contemplation of 
the lofty archings of trees and perpetu- 
ated in the stone buildings erected to 
God in western Europe through the 
centuries clustering around the thir- 
teenth. 
Trees afford hiding and nesting 
places for many birds and animals. 
Their cooling shelter comforts the cat- 
tle; they furnish coursing-places among 
their branches for the sportive climb- 
ing-animals, and their tender twigs give 
restful delight to the little birds far out 
of reach of any foe. 
Man has always used the trees for 
house building; his warmth is largely 
supplied from fires of wood and leaves; 
from the days when Adam and Eve did 
their first tailoring with fig leaves, the 
trees have been levied upon for articles 
of clothing till now the world is sup- 
plied with hats of wood, millions of 
buttons of the same material are worn, 
and the wooden shoes of the peasantry 
of Europe clump gratefully over the 
ground in acknowledgment of the debt 
of mankind to the woods. 
Weapons of all sorts, in all ages, have 
been largely of wood. Houses, furni- 
ture, troughs, spoons, bowls, plows, and 
all sorts of implements for making a 
living have been fashioned by man 
from timber. Every sort of carriage 
man ever devised, whether for land or 
water travel, depended in its origin 
upon the willing material the trees have 
offered. Although we now have 
learned to plow the seas with prow of 
steel and ride the horseless carriage 
that has little or no wood about it, yet 
the very perfection of these has arisen 
from the employment of wood in count- 
less experiments before the metal thing 
was invented. 
Our daily paper is printed from the 
successors of Gutenberg's wooden type, 
upon what seems to be paper, but is in 
reality the ground-up and whitened 
pulp of our forest trees. Our food is 
largely of nuts and fruits presented 
us by the trees of all climes, which are 
yet brought to our doors in many in- 
stances by wooden sailing-vessels, 
whose sails are spread on spars from 
our northern forests. 
The baskets of the white man and 
234 
