Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1870 [PAGE 366]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

352

ful to his taste. From that day to this, a tree has been ranked among the loveliest and most useful of created objects. Childhood entwines the love of a tree in its heart, as it gambols and sports in the shade. Youth is equally gratified, whether it seeks the shade to study nature or books, or to breathe the words of love beneath the tangled boughs, where only one can hear. Trees are not forgotten by the man when the fires of youth no longer burn in his bosom, but now their leaves protect him from the heat of the summer sun, and the cool atmosphere beneath them refresh him for his toils, or the same trees shield him from the cold blasts of winter winds. In old age, when the head is whitened as by the frost, memory runs back to trees known in former days. The gambols are played over, the studies, the loves are lived again, and the old man sighs for the shade of those old trees, greener in memory, than in the month of June. The birds are there ; all our playmates, not even the dog is gone from that dream. The days when we went nutting, or botanizing, when we filled the basket with the rich apple, the luscious pear, the melting peach, and the nectared plum, are fresh before our minds, as of yore. We delight to adorn the spot where we expect to rest from our labors, with these best gifts of heaven to man. And finally, we ask to lie beneath those shades till the great day of days shall come. We would as soon be beneath the blue waters of the ocean as be buried on the bleak hill, where sun, and wind, and storms battle, in a grave where no tree sheds its soft shade. Tree raising is more economical than corn raising, so far as profits in dollars and cents are concerned; but I must leave that to others, or for another occasion, and now content myself with the assertion that TREE RAISING IN

THE NORTHWEST IS A NECESSITY.

1st. Because of our location in the grand divisions of North America as regards vegetation. 2d. Because timber trees can afford our only protection from the inclemency of the climatical influences that affect this region. 3d. Because thick timber belts afford a defense against the spread of noxious insects and fungal growths. 4th. Because thick timber belts, and especially evergreens, are the best protection against the attacks and spread of malarious diseases, and consequently they render a country healthful. Each of these heads contain sufficient matter to occupy all the time you can allow me, and therefore I can but touch here and there upon some of their prominent points. The North American continent may be divided into five grand regions, according to their vegetable growths. These are the regions of the mosses and Saxafrayes, of the dense woods, of alternate icoods and prairies, of the prairie or grassy, and the arid or desert region. The vegetable productions of these regions, modified in part by soil, are mainly dependent upon the peculiar climate possessed by each. When the true boundaries of these regions shall be well understood, men will be enabled to define not only the vegetable forms of each, but also to understand and speak intelligently of many of the peculiarities of their several climates.