St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1896-05-01

"a q; g germ came "ne to sc my
mer when travel.
ing in railway carriage amid the beau.
tifully cultivated fields of Belgium, +"
said the secretary. "a cottonwood seed
Oh wings Of down drifted into my COM
partment. 1t came like a materialized
whisper from home. Catching it in my
hand, forgot the present and wandered
into the past to a floating mote like that
which had years and years before been
planted by the winds and currents on
the banks Of the Missouri That mote
had taken life and root and had grown
to splendid proportions until in 1854 the
ak of the pioneers had vanquished it and
the saw had reduced it to lumber. From
its treehood evolved human habitation,
home-my homeland in it all the
endearing contentment and infinite salts
faction which that blessed Anglo-Saxon
word conveys-that one word which
means all that is worth living for and
for which alone all good men and wom-
ell are living
"All Of us should be amateur forest
ers, " continued the secretary. Forests
and cur English ancestry are indissolu-
bly, connected. The Druids first planted
forests and groves in England. In the
twilight between barbarism and civil
cation the teachers and students of
Great Britain were Druids. All their
discourses and ceremonies transpired in
the oaken groves and sacred orchards of
their own planting, and Pliny declares
the word Druid to have come from the
Greek word drus, AN oak. ,"
No Druid oaks remain, but there are
still in England many very venerable
trees. The history and names of these
the secretary has at his tongues end.
Among them are the Damory oak of
Dorsetshire, 1900 years of age; Owen
Glendower's oak at Shelton, near
Shrewsbury, from the branches of which
that chieftain looked down upon the
battle between Henry " and Henry
Percy in 1903, and there was the great
oak of Magdalen college, Oxford, which
was a sturdy sapling when Alfred the
Great founded that institution 900 years
ago. 1t received injuries during the
reign of Charles I, which at the close of
the last century caused its decay and
death. There are many oaks of great
age in Windsor forest, and one of them
is 1000 years old. Herne's oak, which
had borne that hunters name from the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, made famous
to the present generation in "The Merry
Wives of Windsor" was blown down
not many decades ago.
The secretary recalled the fact that
Elizabeth, who was first saluted at
Hatfield as queen of England in the
shade of the towering oaks which line
its broadcast avenues, greatly encouraged
English speaking advocates of forestry;
that when Columbus was seeking new
world, his crew, anxious and incredu-
lous, even unto mutiny, the waves bore
out to his ship twigs and foliage from
the forests of the unknown land, giving
him hope, faith, victory even.
NEARLY 200 years after Columbus,
said Mr. Morton, "came the Puritans, and
then began the war upon the woodlands
of America. Since then, ak in hand, the
race has advanced from the Atlantic sea.
board westward for more than two cen
turtles, devastating forests with most un-
reasoning energy, always cutting them
down and never replanting them. In the
eastern and middle states, the pioneers
have wantonly destroyed, without
thought of their posterity, millions upon
millions Of primeval forests"
asked the secretary what suggested
Arbor day to his mind.
"The treelessness of my surround
ings," he replied. cit originated in
Lincoln, Neb., Oh the 4th of January,
1879. 1t was my good fortune to have
written, submitted and advocated the
resolution which created it and to have
originated the term 'Arbor day. Now
Arbor day is scholastic festival of our
times. And what could be more appro-
pirate? Students, scholars and philoso-
piers have always been associated with
trees and their conservation. (And, by
the way, don t make that conversation,
as the printer did with me some years
ago.. The Academeia of Athens, where
Socrates and Plato taught, was only
grove of plane trees. The plane tree that
Agamemnon planted at Delphos; the
one grown by Menelaus, the husband OF
Helen of Troy, and that one which so
charmed Xerxes with its surpassless
beauty, when invading Greece with his
great army, that he remained one entire
day wrapped in its admiration, encir
cling it with golden band, decking it
with precious jewels, having its figure
stamped upon golden medal and by
his delay losing his subsequent battle
with the Greeks--these are all historic
trees and yet they are strangers almost
to the average reader.
"The love of all the ancient worlds
written life came inscribed on the inner
bark or 'liber' of trees. Possibly you
don't know that the word library
which embraces all the conserved
thought of all the thinking ages, comes
from the name of the inner bark OF a
free. And the word book, take either
derivation you choose, comes from one
in German or Saxon or Scandinavian,
meaning lockwood, because in the
dawn of learning all records were writ
IL. ~. Laa..L l,nnrdc and the Leaf and