Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

SOMETHING ABOUT TREES.

BY H. R.

THE

HE best earthly friend to man | dimension of trees in the human estimais the tree, and strange to say, tion. Now you would scarcely think the worst enemy of the tree is man," said that those little green upstarts are in the Professor. He and I were sitting reality trees two hundred feet high and with our backs to a block of pure white six or seven feet in diameter! So great is granite, in the path that leads below the the difference between the tree in the summit of the Yosemite gorge, at the and the real tree." of man, place where one of the first views is en- "He looks at it through the wrong joyed. end of the telesc pe," I said, laconically. "He is converting the world into a desert by a relentless war against the trees," said my friend.

"Of all man's earthly friends," I replied, "you would have me believe the tree bears the palm."

The Professor was one of the gentlest of men, though I too often tried his patience with a play upon words, when I should have given a fitting answer to his sage remarks. He only smiled benignly. "True," he said, "one order, at least, bears the palm. By the way, is it a mere coincidence that the word palm, as a token of victory, should be the name of the most perfect vegetable the world has ever seen? But we were talking about man's ingratitude towards his best earthly friend. If the time ever ceased when a man was accounted great according as he lifted up axes against the thick trees,' man has, nevertheless, continued to swing the axe, until, to his own detriment, the forests have half disappeared from the earth."

"He has shown himself to be a bad fellow in proportion as he has proved himself a good feller," I said, desperately.

The Professor resumed. "He does. not know the worth of trees, or comprehend the part they have played in the creation. The scene before us may furnish a comparison. Look where I point, and see, far down this valley, amid the trees that help to render this scene overpowering in its loveliness, several green objects, small, but yet distinguishable. They appear to be no larger than a picayune rose-bush. That is about the

eye

To this I observed: "If he does not soon leave off, there will be nothing left with leaves on. And he must plant trees, or he will be soon supplanted."

"A forest does not grow in a day," he replied. "The cure is slow and doubtful, therefore prevention is much better. If some one with the spirit of Mr. Bergh would organize a society for prevention in this particular, he would be a public benefactor. The author of the poem Woodman, Spare that Tree,' did a good work for man, whose results are beyond computation."

Wishing to draw out my friend on the point he had touched uponthe worth of trees to man—I said, half by way of a challenge, "Let us see; we analyze a dry tree, and find it to be carbon, 49 per cent., oxygen 45, and hydrogen 6. These are very common-place products, and there is no lack of them in the world."

"Your remark suggests the wonderful part trees have played in the long interval between the upheaval of the continents and the appearance of man. The superabundant carbon with which the atmosphere was loaded, in the poisonous form of carbonic acid gas, rendered the earth unfit for man and the superior animals, and while much of it was being embodied in the crust of the earth in layers of limestone miles in thickness,

through the deposits in the oceans of minute animal organisms, which, dying, showered down their shells of carbonate of lime to the floor of the ocean, trees and plants were at work accomplishing the same desired end. It was not, however, until the carboniferous age, that this process in the vegetable world went on commensurate with the formation of limestones and marbles by polypi. The coal measures testify to the extent to which the trees of that period, like lightning rods conveying the bolts of Jove harmless into the earth, transferred a fatal element to an underground habitation, whence it should in time be drawn forth to drive our machinery, to cook our food, and to mollify the temperature of our parlors and dining-rooms."

review, under the appearance of successive days, of the leading incidents of the six ages that ended in the silvan glories of paradise, amid which the first human pair found a pavilion."

"Your doctrine of the usefulness of trees," I remarked, "needs some qualification. There are trees destructive to human life-the Upas tree, for example, the 'hydra tree of death,' as the poets call it."

66

The Professor shook his head. "A mistake," he said, gravely, a great mistake. In the early days of the Dutch East India Company, a hair-brained traveller, Foersch by name, gave the Upas tree a false celebrity. Like a bad report that grows by moving, Foersch's account was enlarged upon by sensational "Those were wonderful transforma- writers-of that class who write for the tions, Professor," quoth I. Following columns of Sunday papers, or the coarse Moses at a great distance, and without a pictorials, or who get up works entitled spark of his inspiration, I look at the Wonders of the World'-who repreatmospheric envelope which of old wrap-sented that poison lurked in the soil and ped this planet, and see trees; I look into the trees, and see the anthracite; I look into the anthracite and see the diamond."

[ocr errors]

"That is the order of change," said he, "and Moses must have been inspired to set forth an order in creation entirely unknown in his day, and corresponding with the deductions of modern science. The age in which trees figured most conspicuously in the past, the carboniferous period, corresponds with the third day of Genesis, after the continents generally had been lifted from the seas, and ere the atmosphere was so far cleared of its vapors and gases, that the sun, moon and stars could shine out clearly."

"Were there not animals before that time?"

"Not many which, in point of species or size, would strike the eye of a prophet in a vision. They were not terrestrial, but marine and amphibious. The order would be, first trees, and then the birds and mammals that find shelter among them. I suppose that Moses, like other prophets when they received intimations of the unknown, saw the truth, or so much of it as he needed, in a vision. All that he needed for his purpose was a

[ocr errors]

air around the Upas, so that nothing could grow, or nobody live for a mile in every direction. It was absurdly said that in a civil war in Java, 1,300 out of 1,600 men being driven within the baleful influence of the Upas tree, perished miserably."

Un

"The Upas tree grows to a height of one hundred feet, the trunk for twothirds of the distance being clear of limbs. Birds not only fly over it, but settle and sing upon the branches. derbrush and vines are found in its shade, the same as beneath other trees. The juice, which flows from beneath the bark when the tree is tapped, is poisonous, but as much may be said of many other vegetable juices. If ever you visit Java you may tell a Upas by the spread of the trunk near the root, forming two thick projections, like buttresses.

"The Upas is not without utility. Garments are sometimes made of the inner bark, and who knows what other uses time may reveal? There are no Upas trees outside of Java and Sumatra; and the injury that they all combined may do, will be outweighed by the benefit to man of a single caoutchouc, or Indiarubber tree.

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

as to establish his divinity, said to Nathaniel, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.' Screened from the view of mortals the Israelite rested under the green canopy of fig leaves, engaged, as we may suppose, in private devotion. This serves to account for Nathaniel's answer, 'Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel,' for Nathaniel now perceived that Jesus was gifted with omniscience.

"It may seem singular that the highest trees in the world should be trees which, as some would say, are leafless. They belong to the famliy Pinus, and have needle-shaped leaves, objects so different from what we call leaves that they deserve another name. Humboldt says that in travelling from a port of the Pacific coast of South America to Mexico, he witnessed the singular and painful impression which the first sight of pine trees made upon a young nobleman, born at Quito, under the equator, who had never seen trees of the pine family, or trees with folia acerosa.' He could not believe but the trees were leafless, and he already felt a chilling influence, as if, in going north, he had already come under the pinching influence of the North Pole."

"Are not the highest trees the oldest, as a general rule?”

"As a general rule they are, but there are exceptions. The yew tree is longlived, attaining, as some suppose, an age of thirty centuries. But the Baobab, sometimes called Adansonia, and monkey bread-tree, is both long-lived and large. Three or four hundred years ago Portuguese sailors inscribed their names on Baobab trees, with the date, cutting letters in some instances a foot long. Comparing the depth of these carvings with the new growth around them, one may form a pretty correct idea of the time required for the tree to grow to its present size. Naturalists have thought the age of certain Baobab trees to be five or six thousand years."

"Do not the annual rings' in the trunk of a tree show to a certainty their age, counting a ring for a year? I remember a poetic reference to this peculiarity:

'Gloom without, and gloom within.
Let me feel the awe that broods
O'er primeval solitudes,
Where the voice of centuries
Speaks from patriarchal trees,
Whose concentric annals shame
Written lines' remotest fame.'

"The age of trees whose trunks show these rings may be safely judged by an observation of them. Dicotyledonous

plants increase by a yearly outside ring of wood, the growth taking place outside a central axis. This is the case with our oaks, maples, and most of our fruit and forest trees. The palms and the grasses, our Indian corn, for instance, in which a section of the stalk would disclose no rings, are examples of an entirely different class, the monocotyledons, whose age cannot be determined by this rule.

"You have heard of the great chestnut tree of Mount Etna, in which, as tradition says, Jane, queen of Aragon, then on a visit to the volcano, being overtaken by a storm, took refuge, with one hundred of her attendants. A house was afterwards built in the hollow in which the queen found shelter."

"Please tell me something about the Baobab tree, for all the idea I have of it is a vague one that there is something quite remarkable about it."

"The Baobab was for a time considered the largest tree in the world, but the discovery in California of the colossal pines has deprived it of the honor. Though a monstrous tree, the Baobab, for want of height, looks like a stunted giant. It is found in Africa, from the Cape de Verd Islands to Abyssinia, and as far south as the river Zambezi, where Dr. Livingstone saw it. It sometimes grows to a width of thirty, and even thirty-four feet. When it is one hundred feet in girth it rarely rises higher than ninety. You look in vain for leaves, except in the rainy season. The bark inclines to a white color, and when in their leafless state, those which are very broad at the base seem like huge white tents, or like enormous white ghosts, with scarecrow arms thrown up in the air.

"When the interior has become hollowed by age it is converted by the natives

[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« AnteriorContinuar »