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N.H. Egleston >> Arbor Day Leaves
Arbor Day Leaves
BY
N.H. EGLESTON
OF THE FORESTRY DIVISION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE WASHINGTON;
AUTHOR OF "HAND-BOOK OF TREE-PLANTING," ETC., ETC.
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO
Arbor Day Leaves
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Arbor Day Leaves
A COMPLETE PROGRAMME FOR ARBOR DAY OBSERVANCE, INCLUDING READINGS,
RECITATIONS, MUSIC, AND GENERAL INFORMATION
N.H. EGLESTON
OF THE FORESTRY DIVISION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON.
AUTHOR OF "HAND-BOOK OF TREE-PLANTING," ETC.
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO BOSTON
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction 2
Origin of Arbor Day 2
Readings for Arbor Day 3
About Trees--(J. Sterling Morton) 3
Leaves, and What They Do 5
Bryant, the Poet of Trees 8
Forest Hymn--(Bryant) 8
James Russell Lowell 9
The Oak--(James Russell Lowell) 9
What One Tree is Worth 11
Enduring Character of the Forests--(Susan Fenimore Cooper) 11
The Popular Poplar Tree--(Blanch Willis Howard) 12
Forestry and the Need of It--(Hon. Adolph Lene) 12
Tree Weather Proverbs 13
Flowers 13
Arbor Day Celebrations 14
Growing Observance of Arbor Day 14
States and Territories Observing Arbor Day 15
Encouraging Words 15
The Best Use of Arbor Day 16
Trees in Their Leafless State 18
Programme for Arbor Day 19
I. Exercises in the School Room 19
II. The March 24
III. Exercises at the Tree Planting 25
INTRODUCTION.
In preparing the second number of our manual for Arbor Day, we have
endeavored to keep in mind the fact that Arbor Day was originally
designed not as a mere festival or holiday, a pleasant occasion for
children or adults, but to encourage the planting of trees for a
serious purpose--the lasting benefit of the country in all its
interests. As the poet Whittier has so well said, "The wealth, beauty,
fertility, and healthfulness of the country largely depend upon the
conservation of our forests and the planting of trees." 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.
ORIGIN OF ARBOR DAY.
To J. Sterling Morton, ex-Governor of Nebraska, and Secretary of
Agriculture under President Cleveland, belongs the honor of
originating this tree-planting festival, and he is popularly known
throughout our whole country as the "father of Arbor Day." So well has
the day been observed in Nebraska since 1872 that there are now over
700,000 acres of trees in that state planted by human hands.
The successful establishment of the day in Nebraska commended it at
once to the people of other states, and it was soon adopted by Kansas,
Iowa, and Minnesota, and was not long in making its way into Michigan
and Ohio.
In the latter state it took on a new character, which has caused it to
spread rapidly throughout the country. The teachers and pupils of the
schools were invited to unite in its observance, and instead of trees
being planted merely as screens from the winds, they were also planted
for ornamental purposes and as memorials of important historical
events and of celebrated persons, authors, statesmen, and others. Thus
the tree-planting has gained a literary aspect and an interest for all
classes, for young as well as old. In preparation for it the pupils of
the schools have been led to the study of trees, their characteristics
and uses. They have learned the history of celebrated trees and of
persons who have been connected with them. They have become familiar
with the lives of eminent persons and the best writings of
distinguished authors, and thus have received most valuable
instruction, while, at the same time, their finer tastes have been
cultivated.
Since the observance of the day has been modified, as it was on its
introduction into Ohio, it has spread rapidly through the country and
at present forty-four states and territories celebrate Arbor Day. Its
every way healthful and desirable features have so generally commended
it also that it has gained a foothold abroad and has begun to be
observed in England, Scotland, France, and even in far-off South
Africa. It has become preeminently a school day and a school festival.
In many cases school teachers and superintendents have introduced its
observance. But it has soon so commended itself to all that, in most
cases, it has been established by law and made a legal holiday.
Readings for Arbor Day.
ABOUT TREES.
From the originator of Arbor Day.
A tree is the perfection in strength, beauty, and usefulness of
vegetable life. It stands majestic through the sun and storm of
centuries. Resting in summer beneath its cooling shade, or sheltering
besides its massive trunk from the chilling blast of winter, we are
prone to forget the little seed whence it came. 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. On this spot, in this tree, a metamorphosis has so deftly taken
place that it has failed to excite even the wonder of the majority of
men.
[Illustration]
Here, sixty years ago, a school boy planted an acorn. Spring came,
then the germ of this oak began to attract the moisture of the soil.
The shell of the acorn was then broken open by the internal growth of
the embryo oak. It sent downward a rootlet to get soil and water, and
upward it shot a stem to which the first pair of leaves was attached.
These leaves are thick and fleshy. They constitute the greater bulk of
the acorn. They are the first care-takers of the young oak. Once out
of the earth and in the sunlight they expand, assume a finer texture,
and begin their usefulness as nursing leaves, "folia nutrientia." They
contain a store of starch elaborated in the parent oak which bore the
acorn.
In tree infancy the nursing leaves take oxygen from the air, and
through its influence the starch in the nursing leaves is transmuted
into a tree baby-food, called dextrine, which is conveyed by the water
absorbed during germination to the young rootlet and to the gemmule
and also to the first aerial leaf. So fed, this leaf expands, and
remains on the stem all summer. The nursing leaves die when the aerial
leaves have taken their food away, and then the first stage of oak
hood has begun. It has subterranean and superterranean organs, the
former finding plant-food in the earth, and the latter gathering it in
the air, the sunlight, and the storm. 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.
Combustion lets loose the captive rays and beams which growing plants
imprisoned years, centuries, even eons ago, long before human life
began its earthly career. The interdependence of animal and tree life
is perennial. The intermission of a single season of a vegetable life
and growth on the earth would exterminate our own and all the animal
races. The trees, the forests are essential to man's health and life.
When the last tree shall have been destroyed there will be no man left
to mourn the improvidence and thoughtlessness of the forest-destroying
race to which he belonged.
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. The
orient is dead to civilization, dead to commerce, dead to intellectual
development. The orient died of treelessness.
From the grave of the eastern nations comes the tree monition to the
western. The occident like the orient would expire with the
destruction of all its forests and woodlands.
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.
It is the only anniversary in which humanity looks futureward instead
of pastward, in which there is a consensus of thought for those who
are to come after us, instead of reflections concerning those who have
gone before us. It is a practical anniversary. It is a beautiful
anniversary. To the common schools of the country I confide its
perpetuation and usefulness with the same abiding faith that I would
commit the acorn to the earth, the tree to the soil, or transmit the
light on the shore to far off ships on the waves beyond, knowing
certainly that loveliness, comfort, and great contentment shall come
to humanity everywhere because of its thoughtful and practical
observance by all the civilized peoples of the earth.
J. STERLING MORTON.
[Illustration]
LEAVES, AND WHAT THEY DO.
The leaves of the trees afford an almost endless study and a constant
delight. Frail, fragile things, easily crumpled and torn, they are
wonderful in their delicate structure, and more wonderful if possible
on account of the work which they perform.
They are among the most beautiful things offered to our sight. Some
one has well said that the beauty of the world depends as much upon
leaves as upon flowers. We think of the bright colors of flowers and
are apt to forget or fail to notice the coloring of leaves. But what a
picture of color, beyond anything that flowers can give us, is spread
before our sight for weeks every autumn, when the leaves ripen and
take on hues like those of the most gorgeous sunset skies, and the
wide landscape is all aglow with them. A wise observer has called
attention also to the fact that the various kinds of trees have in the
early springtime also, only in a more subdued tone, the same colors
which they put on in the autumn. If we notice the leaves carefully, we
shall see that there is a great variety of color in them all through
the year. While the prevailing color, or the body color so to speak,
is green, and the general tone of the trees seen in masses is
green--the most pleasant of all colors to be abidingly before the
sight--this is prevented from becoming dull or somber because it
comprises almost innumerable tints and shades of the self-same color,
while other distinct colors are mingled with it to such an extent as
to enliven the whole foliage mass. Spots of yellow, of red, of white,
and of intermediate colors are dashed upon the green leaves or become
the characteristic hues of entire trees, and so there is brought about
an endless variety and beauty of color.
Then there is the beauty of form, size, position, and arrangement. Of
the one hundred and fifty thousand or more known species of trees, the
leaves of each have a characteristic shape. 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.
What a variety of size also have the leaves, from those of the birches
and willows to those of the sycamores, the catalpas and the
paulownias. On the same tree also the leaves vary in size, those
nearest the ground and nearest the trunk being usually larger than
those more remote. How different as to beauty would the trees be if
their leaves were all of the same size; how much less pleasing to the
sight.
Then what a wide difference is there in the position of the leaves on
the trees and their relative adjustment to each other? Sometimes they
grow singly, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in whirls or clusters. Some
droop, others spread horizontally, while others still are more or less
erect. The leaves of some trees cling close to the branches, others
are connected with the branches by stems of various length and so are
capable of greater or less movement. The leaves of poplars and aspens
have a peculiarly flattened stem, by reason of which the slightest
breath of wind puts them in motion.
These are some of the most obvious characteristics of the leaves, and
by which they are made the source of so much of the beauty of the
world in which we live. It will be a source of much pleasure to anyone
who will begin now, in the season of swelling buds and opening leaves,
to watch the leaves as they unfold and notice their various forms and
colors and compare them one with another. There is no better way of
gaining valuable knowledge of trees than this, for the trees are known
by their leaves.
But let us turn now from their outward appearance and consider what is
done by them, for the leaves are among the great workers of the world,
or, if we may not speak of them as workers, a most important work is
done in or by means of them, a work upon which our own life depends
and that of all the living tribes around us.
Every leaf is a laboratory, in which, by the help of that great
magician, the sun, most wonderful changes and transformations are
wrought. By the aid of the sun the crude sap which is taken up from
the ground is converted by the leaves into a substance which goes to
build up every part of the tree and causes it to grow larger from year
to year; so that instead of the tree making the leaves, as we commonly
think, the leaves really make the tree.
Leaves, like other parts of the plant or tree, are composed of cells
and also of woody material. The ribs and veins of the leaves are the
woody part. By their stiffness they keep the leaves spread out so that
the sun can act upon them fully, and they prevent them also from being
broken and destroyed by the winds as they otherwise would be. They
serve also as ducts or conduits by which the crude sap is conveyed to
the leaves, and by which when it has there been made into plant food,
it is carried into all parts of the tree for its nourishment.
Protected and upheld by these expanded woody ribs, the body of the
leaf consists of a mass of pulpy cells arranged somewhat loosely, so
that there are spaces between them through which air can freely pass.
Over this mass of cells there is a skin, or epidermis as it is called,
the green surface of the leaf. In this there are multitudes of minute
openings, or breathing pores, through which air is admitted, and
through which also water or watery vapor passes out into the
surrounding atmosphere. In the leaf of the white lily there are as
many as 60,000 of these openings in every square inch of surface and
in the apple leaf not fewer than 24,000. These breathing pores, called
stomates, are mostly on the under side of the leaf, except in the case
of leaves which float upon the water. There is a beautiful contrivance
also in connection with these pores, by which they are closed when the
air around is dry and the evaporation of the water from the leaves
would be so rapid as to be harmful to the tree, and are opened when
the surrounding atmosphere is moist.
The green color of the leaves is owing to the presence in the cells of
minute green grains or granules, called chlorophyll, which means
leaf-green, and these granules are indispensable to the carrying on of
the important work which takes place in the leaves. They are more
numerous and also packed more closely together near the upper surface
of the leaf than they are near the lower. It is because of this that
the upper surface is of a deeper green than the lower.
Such, then, is the laboratory of the leaf, the place where certain
inorganic, lifeless substances such as water, lime, sulphur, potash,
and phosphorus are transformed and converted into living and organic
vegetable matter, and from which this is sent forth to build up every
part of the tree from deepest root to topmost sprig. It is in the
leaves also that all the food of man and all other animals is
prepared, for if any do not feed upon vegetable substances directly
but upon flesh, that flesh nevertheless has been made only as
vegetable food has been eaten to form it. It is, as the Bible says,
"The tree of the field is man's life."
But let us consider a little further the work of the leaves. The tree
is made up almost wholly of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon. It is easy
to see where the oxygen and hydrogen are obtained, for they are the
two elements which compose water, and that, we have seen, the roots
are absorbing from the ground all the while and sending through the
body of the tree into the leaves. But where does the carbon come from?
A little examination will show.
The atmosphere is composed of several gases, mainly of oxygen and
nitrogen. Besides these, however, it contains a small portion of
carbonic acid, that is, carbon chemically united with oxygen. The
carbonic acid is of no use to us directly, and in any but very minute
quantities is harmful; but the carbon in it, if it can be separated
from the oxygen, is just what the tree and every plant wants. And now
the work of separating the carbon from the oxygen is precisely that
which is done in the wonderful laboratory of the leaf. Under the magic
touch of the sun, the carbonic acid of the atmosphere which has
entered the leaf through the breathing pores or stomates and is
circulating through the air-passages and cells, is decomposed, that
is, taken to pieces; the oxygen is poured out into the air along with
the watery vapor of the crude sap, while the carbon is combined with
the elements of water and other substances which we have mentioned, to
form the elaborated sap or plant-material which is now ready to be
carried from the leaves to all parts of the plant or tree, to nourish
it and continue its growth. Such is the important and wonderful work
of the leaf, the tender, delicate leaf, which we crumple so easily in
our fingers. It builds up, atom by atom, the tree and the great
forests which beautify the world and provide for us a thousand
comforts and conveniences. Our houses and the furniture in them, our
boats and ships, the cars in which we fly so swiftly, the many
beautiful and useful things which are manufactured from wood of
various kinds, all these, by the help of the sun, are furnished us by
the tiny leaves of the trees.
BRYANT, THE POET OF TREES.
"It is pleasant," as Mr. George W. Curtis has said, "to
remember, on Arbor Day, that Bryant, our oldest American
poet and the father of our American literature, is
especially the poet of trees. He grew up among the solitary
hills of western Massachusetts, where the woods were his
nursery and the trees his earliest comrades. The solemnity
of the forest breathes through all his verse, and he had
always, even in the city, a grave, rustic air, as of a man
who heard the babbling brooks and to whom the trees told
their secrets."
His "Forest Hymn" is familiar to many, but it cannot be too
familiar. It would be well if teachers would encourage their
pupils to commit the whole, or portions of it, at least, to
memory. Let it be made a reading lesson, but, in making it
such, let pains be taken to point out its felicities of
expression, its beautiful moral tone and lofty sentiment,
and its wise counsels for life and conduct. Nothing could be
more appropriate, especially for the indoor portion of the
Arbor Day exercises, than to have this poem, or portions of
it, read by some pupil in full sympathy with its spirit, or
by some class in concert.
FOREST HYMN.
The groves were God's first temples, ere man learned
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave
And spread the roof above them, ere he framed
The lofty vault to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplications. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences
Which from the stilly twilight of the place
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over him and bowed
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect
God's ancient sanctuaries and adore
Only among the crowd and under roofs
That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,
Here, in the shadow of this ancient wood,
Offer one hymn, thrice happy if it find
Acceptance in His ear.
--BRYANT.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
We can hardly see or think of trees without being reminded of Mr.
Lowell, whose death during the last year was so great a loss. He was
eminently a lover of trees, and they were the inspiration of some of
his best prose and poetry. This love of trees led him to call his
pleasant place of residence, in Cambridge, "Elmwood." In making up our
selections for reading or recitation on Arbor Day, the writings of no
one have been turned to more often, probably, than those of Mr.
Lowell, and it will be very proper if we make this year's observance
distinguished by the abundance of our extracts from his various works.
We may well also plant memorial trees in honor of him. No one is more
worthy of such honor, and we can hardly do any better thing than to
plant trees which shall bear his name and remind us hereafter of his
noble words and noble life. And no memorial of him would be more
appropriate or more accordant with his own feelings than a growing
tree. This is abundantly shown by the following letter, written only a
few years ago, when it was proposed in one of our schools, to plant on
Arbor Day, a tree in his memory.