Nathaniel Hillyer Egleston

“ Trees are no respecters of persons. They grow as luxuriantly beside the cabin of the pioneer as against the palace of the millionaire. Trees are not proud. What is this tree? This great trunk, these stalwart limbs, these beautiful branches, these gracefully bending boughs, these gorgeous flowers, this flashing foliage and ripening fruit, purpling in the autumnal haze are only living materials organized in the laboratory of Nature's mysteries out of rain, sunlight, dews, and earth. ”

“ Says Humboldt, "Men, in all climates, seem to bring upon future generations two calamities at once—a want of fuel and a scarcity of water." With our comparatively sparse population and our continental stretch of forest, it has hardly entered our minds that we could be improvident in the use of our woodlands. It has seemed to us that we had enough, and that for ever; and so we have consumed the forests with a recklessness which has perhaps never been surpassed. We have even sacrificed them by carelessness, or in the wantonness of a temporary greed, utterly regardless of the future. ”

“ In all civilizations man has cut down and consumed, but seldom restored or replanted, the forests. In biblical times Palestine was lovely in the foliage of the palm, and the purpling grapes hung upon her hillsides and gleamed in her fertile valleys like gems in the diadems of her princes. But man, thoughtless of the future, careless of posterity, destroyed and replaced not; so, where the olive and the pomegranate and the vine once held up their luscious fruit for the sun to kiss, all is now infertility, desolation, desert, and solitude. ”

“ Twenty-five thousand acres of woodland are consumed by the railroads, the manufactories, and the homes of the United States every twenty-four hours. How many are planted? To avert treelessness, to improve the climatic conditions, for the sanitation and embellishment of home environments, for the love of the beautiful and useful combined in the music and majesty of a tree, as fancy and truth unite in an epic poem, Arbor Day was created. It has grown with the vigor and beneficence of a grand truth or a great tree. It faces the future. ”

“ The adaptation of trees to one climate or another, their comparative value for one purpose or another, the obstacles to successful planting—these, and many other things, need to be known as they are not yet known. Some things we can learn from the experiments which have been made and the knowledge which has been gained in Europe. But so different are the trees there and here, and so different the conditions of soil and climate, that the problem set before us is virtually a new one, which must be worked out carefully and patiently on our own ground. ”

“ Why should we be behind the Old World in caring for the schools? By the munificence of one of her citizens, New York has twice offered premiums for the best-kept school-grounds. Why may we not have Arbor Day premiums in all of our States and in every town for the most tasteful arrangement of school-house and grounds? These places of education should be the pride of every community instead of being, as they so often are, a reproach and shame. ”

“ We shall know, as it was not possible to know before, their value as sources of lumber and fuel, and for various uses in the arts. We shall know, as we have not known before, the various agencies by which the forests are destroyed, and the rapidity with which their destruction is effected. We shall learn, as we have not learned before, that, wasteful as is the process of converting our forests into lumber, more of our precious woodlands are destroyed by fire than by the axe. ”

“ Sheltered from the winds and, to a considerable degree, from the cold, the snows themselves forming a protecting covering, the earth seldom freezes in the forest, and the warmth from the ground below gradually melts the snow and so feeds the springs and streams as to maintain in them an equable flow. As the warmer sun and wind of advancing spring-time begin to heat the surface of the ground, the screen of the trees prevents their influence from being so sensibly felt in the woods as in the open fields. ”

“ I regard the forest as an heritage, given to us by nature, not for spoil or to devastate, but to be wisely used, reverently honored, and carefully maintained. I regard the forest as a gift entrusted to us only for transient care during a short space of time, to be surrendered to posterity again as unimpaired property, with increased riches and augmented blessings, to pass as a sacred patrimony from generation to generation. ”

“ Meanwhile, let tree-planting be encouraged. Let it be shown, as it has been again and again, that much of our poor and what is commonly regarded as waste land can be made to yield a handsome profit by being devoted to the growth of trees; and that our rough hills and mountain-sides can thus be made of direct pecuniary value, while at the same time they are rendered objects of beauty and the means of protecting our springs, maintaining the flow of our streams, and promoting health and prosperity. With this awakened interest in the forests, sylviculture will come to be one of our arts. ”

“ Arbor Day is not a floral festival, except as the trees may offer their bright blossoms for the occasion. In making our selections from authors, therefore, we have restricted ourselves to what they have said about trees, and have endeavored also to choose only such selections as are of high literary character, and so, not only admissible for occasional use but worthy to be learned and carried in memory for life; trees of thought which may be planted in the young minds in connection with Arbor Day, to grow with their growth and be perpetual sources of enjoyment. ”

“ Forests which have been the growth of centuries have been swept off in a day. The lumberman cuts the few noblest trees, or takes only the choicest portions of them for the purposes of the arts, and burns the rest to ashes, thereby precluding another growth upon the spot. The miner does the same, cutting off the already sparse forests, and taking no pains to replace them. And so it is happening that our forest area, particularly in the more recently settled portions of the country, is rapidly diminishing. ”

“ And if the school premises are now too small in extent to admit of such a use, let the pupils make an earnest plea for additional ground. As a general fact our school-grounds have been shamefully limited in extent and neglected as to their use and keeping. The school-house, in itself and in its surroundings, ought to be one of the most beautiful and attractive objects to be seen in any community. The approach from the street should be like that to any dwelling house, over well kept walks bordered by green turf, with trees and shrubs and flowers offering their adornment. ”

“ We should not have time to become acquainted with the facts ascertained by one census, and to see their bearing upon our life and present occupations, before another census would be at our door with its claims upon our attention, because possibly necessitating some important change in our plans or pursuits.
With the growth of the country, the census constantly becomes a greater and more complicated matter. ”

“ As the season for Arbor Day and tree-planting comes on, just before the buds begin to swell and are getting ready to cover the trees with a fresh mantle of leaves, it is well—as it is also when the leaves have fallen from the trees in autumn—to give attention to the bare trees and notice the characteristic forms of the various species, the manner in which their branches are developed and arranged among themselves, for a knowledge of these things will often enable one to distinguish the different kinds of trees more readily and certainly than by any other means. ”

“ The spark from the tobacco-pipe of a careless tramp may kindle a flame which will speedily spread over some great mountain-side and sweep away the forest covering which has been growing ever since the beginning of our history as a nation. ”

“ The leaves of no two species are precisely alike in form. More than this is also true. No two leaves upon the same tree are in this respect alike. While there is a close resemblance among the leaves of a given tree, so that one familiar with trees would not be in doubt of their belonging to the same tree, though he should see them only when detached, yet there is more or less variation, some subtle difference in the notching or curving of the leaf-edge perhaps, so that each leaf has a form of its own. These differences of shape in the leaves are a constant source of beauty. ”

“ England will at once be adduced, perhaps, as a country not well wooded, and yet one which compares favorably with others in regard to the conditions of living and her competency to secure the welfare of all classes of her people. But England is specially favored in other respects. She has a moist and equable climate secured to her by her surrounding seas and high latitude, while the general shape of her surface and her geological constitution exempt her from the alternations of flood and drought which in so many other countries result from the absence of forests. ”

“ The rootlets in the dark depths of soil, the foliage in the sunlit air, begin now their common joint labor of constructing a majestic oak. Phosphates and all the delicacies of plant-food are brought in from the secret stores of the earth by the former, while foliage and twig and trunk are busy in catching sunbeams, air, and thunderstorms, to imprison in the annual increment of solid wood. There is no light coming from your wood, corncob, or coal fire which some vegetable Prometheus did not, in its days of growth, steal from the sun and secrete in the mysteries of a vegetable organism. ”

“ It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the European nations, having learned its value by its loss in greater or less measure, see the forest to be an important factor in all that constitutes national life and comfort, and have given it a place in their thoughts and in their practical arrangements which we have not in ours. ”

“ Of all the works of the creation which know the changes of life and death, the trees of the forest have the longest existence. Of all the objects which crown the gray earth, the woods preserved unchanged, throughout the greatest reach of time, their native character. The works of man are ever varying their aspect; his towns and his fields alike [Pg 12] reflect the unstable opinions, the fickle wills and fancies of each passing generation ”

“ When we consider the limited territory of Germany, as compared with our own country, one can not take even this cursory observation of its forest schools without having the conviction impressed upon him that forestry is there regarded as a subject of the first importance, and that it has interests and relations which are very much if not altogether overlooked by us. ”