The How and Why Library/Trees
Part II—Trees[edit]
A Year In The Forest[edit]
Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.—Do you remember Eagle Heart, the little red American boy? His home was in the forest. We cannot find such a beautiful forest in our country today, as the one he lived in. No big tree had ever been cut down, except by the beaver dam-builders. The Indians had only stone hatchets. They used poles and bark to make their wigwams and canoes. For fires they used fallen trees and branches and dry brush. They were careful to put out their camp fires, so that very few forests were burned.
In the old world the woods had been cut over, and only the best timber and orchard trees replanted, for many hundreds of years. It was a very great wonder to white people who came to America, to see hickory, walnut and ash trees, oaks, maples, beeches, elms, poplars, willows, birches and wild fruit trees, flowering shrubs and vines, and even pines and other evergreen trees growing together, in the most natural and friendly way. In any bit of wild woodland, in any city park, and on village streets and lawns, you can find most of these trees, and some others that Eagle Heart never saw at all. White people brought the beautiful horse chestnut, and the tall, slim, Lombardy poplar and other trees, from their old homes.
How many of these trees do you know? Eagle Heart knew and loved all the trees in his forest home. Perhaps you know several of them in the summer, when the leaves are on, but he knew them in every season of the year. He knew their height, their color, their spread of limb. He knew their bark, their leaves, their flowers and fruits. He knew where each kind of tree liked best to grow, and what animals and birds and insects used it for a home. And he knew the forest as a whole, in all its seasonal changes.
After three hundred years of cutting down trees, we have begun to re-plant and protect them. Even the schools have a tree-planting or arbor day, so little citizens can help in the work of winning back our lost trees. The more you know about trees, the more you can help in this work. Don't you want to know and to love them as Eagle Heart knew and loved them? The first thing to do is to visit trees, and make some pictures of them with your little kodak eyes. (See Arbor Day, Forest Reserve, Forest-service, Lumbering and the names of different trees.)