St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1896-12-04
The Preservation of Our Trees.

in Scribner's Magazine in the hope tina
they may lead some of our owners O
wood lots to pause a moment befor
continuing their wholesale and indis
eliminate cutting or laying the axe tt
some fine old roadside monarch whicl
has taken hall a century to come to ma
turity. Half a century to come to ma
turity only to be cut down unthinkingly
by the same man who perhaps a few
years later may replace it by an insignii
cant sapling when he ome to realize
that there is no profit, comfort or beauty
in a bare and shadeless road.
To quote from a most interesting arti,
Gle by Frank French, entitled Country
Roads" which appeared in the Septem-
Der issue OF Scribner's Magazine:
go "Conditions in New England are
changing. Men whose boyhood was
spent upon the home farm are coming
back 10 the abandoned farms and
renew their intimacy with nature.
They bring increased resources where
with to enrich their native towns, and
an awakened Consciousness OF beauties
which they scarcely discerned in youth.
MANY strangers, drawn there by the
reputcd beauty OF the region, come rs
summer boarders, or make extensive
tours by wagon through thetown. They
halt at intervals aud leave no inconsid-
cradle amount Of money with those who
entertain them. The annual harvest from
these sources is so significant that it be.
comes a matter OF as great Importance
to tie land owner that the country be
beautiful as that his soil should produce
q large yield OF corn or potatoes to the
acre.
New England possesses surprising
natural advantages. Her skies are
swept by cloud effects which are mag
n%ifcent, and her blue mountain peaks
form incompatible distances. Her nh.
merous lakes, despite the activity OF the
destroying lumberman, are still faukcd,
in many instances by virgin forests, Her
hillsides, sttewn with powders and
mottlcd with gray granite lodges, inter-
spersed with purple juniper and sweet
briar, her fine groves and birch.clad
knobs, her fertile c~'carings and pretty
villages, form middle distances which
are all that could be desired. With this
wealth Unnatural beauty, fresh from the
hand of God, nothing is required TO rem
der her one Of the most beauti ul
regions on earth, but a sane and decent
treatment of her fJrests and streams and
the humanizing touch of art upon her
roads and homes.
ut must be apparent to any intelligent
observerthat those beauties and possibili-
ties are in danger from existing indiner-
ence to, or contempt of, beauty, on the
part of many OF those who own the soil
and whose duty it is to foster and pre-
serve them. Most men have a strong
sentiment oflovc Tor the purely natural
in landscape; but that is a phase OF
nature which one must travel far from
civilization to find. We cannot have the
purely natural and at the same time
roads and homes. The choice lies be-
tween humanized and brutalized nature.
We nave the humanizcd landscape where
focks browse upon brown pasture lots
or stand upon the hillside in the cool
shade of hemlocks which have been
spared the axe because of their dark,
sombcr beauty and their shade. We
have it in TIE bush meadow where cows
feed knee deep in tender grass or cool
themselves in the swale beneath willows
which the thoughtful agriculturaIist has
planted or suffered to remain where they
grew. We feel the human touch in the
belt of mixed timber trees which, by grace
Of its owner, sweeps around the curve of
the mountain, between rich pasture and
fertile field, clothing the valley in mystic
ry, cherishing in its seclusion the fragile
blossoms of the woodland, and hiding
the prying and uniriendly the haunt
Of the squirrel and the nest of the wood
thrush; defending the pickering brooklet
which glides beneath the ferns, tapping
the roots Of the beeches until it flashes
into view at the roadway and goes sing.
beneath the bridge.
ION the other hand, what could be
more forlorn and brutalizing than a
great stretch OF denuded timber land,
where the trees have been mercilessly
hewn down, big and LITTLE old and young?
The marketable sticks have been taken
away, and the small trees, the limbs and
branches are left prone--an unsightlv
tangle to take FIRE on some dry summer
day aud to burn the scant soil down to
the rock, to remain barren and repulsive
What could be more barbarous than
long, leaning piles Of cord wood, hem.
lock bark and boards, skirting the wheel
way, and menacing the passer.by, while
mountains of sawdust, left by the trav-
steam saw-mill, lie yellow in the
sun?
often do we see the roadside near
dwellings made a dumping ground for
all kinds Of rubbish, b~roken-down cats