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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. VI—SEPTEMBER, 1860.—NO. XXXV.
AMONG THE TREES.
In our studies of Trees, we cannot fail to be impressed with theirimportance not only to the beauty of landscape, but also in the economyof life; and we are convinced that in no other part of the vegetablecreation has Nature done so much to provide at once for the comfort, thesustenance, and the protection of her creatures. They afford the wildanimals their shelter and their abode, and yield them the greater partof their subsistence. They are, indeed, so evidently indispensable tothe wants of man and brute, that it would be idle to enlarge upon thesubject, except in those details which are apt to be overlooked. In astate of Nature man makes direct use of their branches for weaving histent, and he thatches it with their leaves. In their recesses he huntsthe animals whose flesh and furs supply him with food and clothing, andfrom their wood he obtains the implements for capturing and subduingthem. Man's earliest farinaceous food was likewise the product of trees;for in his nomadic condition he makes his bread from the acorn and thechestnut: he must become a tiller of the soil, before he can obtain theproducts of the cereal herbs. The groves were likewise the earliesttemples for his worship, and their fruits his first offerings upon thedivine altar.
As man advances nearer to civilization, trees afford him the additionaladvantage which is derived from their timber. The first houses wereconstructed of wood, which enables him by its superior plasticnature, compared with stone, to progress more rapidly in his ideas ofarchitecture. Wood facilitates his endeavors to instruct himself inart, by its adaptedness to a greater variety of purposes than anyother substance. It is, therefore, one of the principal instruments ofcivilization which man has derived from the material world. Though themost remarkable works of the architect are constructed of stone, itwas wood that afforded man that early practice and experience whichinitiated him into the laws of mechanics and the principles of art, andcarried him along gradually to perfection.
But as man is nomadic before he is agricultural, and a maker of tentsand wigwams before he builds houses and temples,—in like manner he isan architect and an idolater before he becomes a student of wisdom; heis a sacrificer in temples and a priest at their altars, before he is ateacher of philosophy or an interpreter of Nature. After the attainmentof science, a higher state of mental culture succeeds, causing the mindto see all Nature invested with beauty and fraught with imaginativecharms, which add new wonders to our views of creation and new dignityto life. Man now learns to regard trees in other relations beside theircapacity to supply his physical and mechanical wants. He looks upon themas the principal ornaments of the face of creation, and as forming theconservatories of Nature, in which she rears those minute wonders ofher skill, the flowers and smaller plants that will flourish only undertheir protection, and those insect hosts that charm the student withtheir beauty and excite his wonder by their mysterious instincts.Science, too, has built an altar under the trees, and delivers thencenew oracles of wisdom, teaching man how they are mysteriously weddedto the clouds, and are thus made the blessed instruments of theirbeneficence to the earth.
Not without reason did the ancients