New Britain herald. [microfilm reel] (New Britain, Conn.) 1890-1976, 1926-08-28
HOW THE TREES
. CAN SUNSHINE
Interesting Data on Plant Life
and How It Works

w dSHlilSloH' II. u, aug, Z6-
Theories discussed before the Brit
ish Association for the Advancement
OF Science about the lifelike quail
ties of plants is a reminder that the
tree, from data we already have, is
a mechanism that In many ways
transcends human ingenuity.
Man is apt to consider the tree ac-
cording to its uses to him. The
home owner thinks of it in terms of
lumber, the sportsman looks to it
for fishing poles or golf clubs, the
painter is concerned with the var
nish it yields, the musician consider
its qualities for rosin or the making
of violins, the publisher watches its
yield of pulpwood, the summer pic
nicker asks only its shade.
Pumping Is One Tree Function.
And so the list might be multi
piled, for trees donate literally thou
sands of commodities to mankind S
use. But what of the tree from its
own point of view?
A tree pumps a water supply TO
its crown, even though that crown
be 800 feet or more in the Sky. Then
it completes the cycle OF circulation
by sending the water back down as
sau, loaded with food to build up the
living part of the trunk, the sheath
of new bark. 1t also fortifies its bark
overcoat with a new layer every
year.
Moreover the tree is a self-oper-
ating chemical laboratory possessing
trade" secrets yet unknown TO the
best human chemists. With water,
mineral matter and carbonic gas
from the air it manufactures its
food, part of which is stored away
as wood. If you would know how
much OF this product is made out of
air and water and how much is
mineral matter sluiced through
root and cell canals from the ground
cut a block of wood, weigh it, burn
it, and then weigh the ashes. The
differences is what a tree manufaC-
lures out of insbstantial air and
water. The warmth from the fire is
literally canned sunshine released
by combustion.
The trees chemical laboratory re-
quires, in place OF gas and electric
power, light and heat from the sun.
So it spreads a net of marvellous
mesh to catch the sunlight and
heat. Man calls the net leaves.
Defics Extremes of Climate
In the temperate zone, at least, a
tree is a more stalwart individual
than all members of the animal
kingdom and most fellow members
Of the plant kingdom. What animal,
for example, can go from a New
England summer to New England
winter without putting on heavier
clothing? Most plants curl UP and
die. The tree turns off the water
system TO keep it from freezing,
hauls in its sunlight net (wintcr
sun is not so much, anyway and
faces the music of the bitterest
northwest winds.
Man has taken the olive branch as
the emblem OF peace but there is
little peace in the whole arboreal
family. A tree not only tends for
itself, it fights for itself. If trees
did not fight for themselves man
would have little use for them. A
tree is a, bush on stills. In the tree
world the upper dog wins, so 1t is
usually the tree which battles its
neighbor for light and because it is
armed with a better and longer
silt it lives and thrives.
Extinct Trees Provide Coal
While it is easy to visualize the
capture of sun heat by tree and
lis release on ones shins from a
fireplace. it is more difficult to ap-
pleciate the heat we get from pre-
historic trees. Fossil forms in coal
show that trees were important and
perhaps the chief jewellers of the
rank jungles that laid down their
lives in the carbonferous age to be
fuel for 1926. The tree forms of
that era were different from those
we know; many of them gigantic
ferns and palnlike trees. But the
pines. which control half of the
worlds forests today, are close rela-
tives of prominent prehistoric tree
families.
One of the densest jungles on
earth today lies along the Motago
river in Guatemala, Should nature.
by the process of the coal age, trans
form that jungle into a coal seam,
il would be only a few inches thick.
What forest of tree life 1t must
have been to produce the seams OF