The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 35, September, 1860

Excerpt

AMONG THE TREES.

In our studies of Trees, we cannot fail to be impressed with their importance not only to the beauty of landscape, but also in the economy of life; and we are convinced that in no other part of the vegetable creation has Nature done so much to provide at once for the comfort, the sustenance, and the protection of her creatures. They afford the wild animals their shelter and their abode, and yield them the greater part of their subsistence. They are, indeed, so evidently indispensable to the wants of man and brute, that it would be idle to enlarge upon the subject, except in those details which are apt to be overlooked. In a state of Nature man makes direct use of their branches for weaving his tent, and he thatches it with their leaves. In their recesses he hunts the animals whose flesh and furs supply him with food and clothing, and from their wood he obtains the implements for capturing and subduing them. Man's earliest farinaceous food was likewise the product of trees; for in his nomadic condition he makes his bread from the acorn and the chestnut: he must become a tiller of the soil, before he can obtain the products of the cereal herbs. The groves were likewise the earliest temples for his worship, and their fruits his first offerings upon the divine altar.

As man advances nearer to civilization, trees afford him the additional advantage which is derived from their timber. The first houses were constructed of wood, which enables him by its superior plastic nature, compared with stone, to progress more rapidly in his ideas of architecture. Wood facilitates his endeavors to instruct himself in art, by its adaptedness to a greater variety of purposes than any other substance. It is, therefore, one of the principal instruments of civilization which man has derived from the material world. Though the most remarkable works of the architect are constructed of stone, it was wood that afforded man that early practice and experience which initiated him into the laws of mechanics and the principles of art, and carried him along gradually to perfection.

But as man is nomadic before he is agricultural, and a maker of tents and wigwams before he builds houses and temples,—in like manner he is an architect and an idolater before he becomes a student of wisdom; he is a sacrificer in temples and a priest at their altars, before he is a teacher of philosophy or an interpreter of Nature. After the attainment of science, a higher state of mental culture succeeds, causing the mind to see all Nature invested with beauty and fraught with imaginative charms, which add new wonders to our views of creation and new dignity to life. Man now learns to regard trees in other relations beside their capacity to supply his physical and mechanical wants. He looks upon them as the principal ornaments of the face of creation, and as forming the conservatories of Nature, in which she rears those minute wonders of her skill, the flowers and smaller plants that will flourish only under their protection, and those insect hosts that charm the student with their beauty and excite his wonder by their mysterious instincts....