Arbor Day Leaves | Page 3

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