Arbor Day Leaves | Page 2

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 preëminently 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