What May be Learned from a Tree

Front Cover
D. Appleton & Company, 1863 - 192 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 151 - tis her privilege Through all the years of this our life, to lead From, joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith that all which we behold Is full of blessings.
Page 150 - The Author of nature has not given laws to the universe, which, like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not permitted, in his works, any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. He may put an end, as he no doubt gave a beginning, to the present system, at some determinate period...
Page 34 - Washington Elm, at Cambridge, — a tree of no extraordinary size — was some years ago estimated to produce a crop of seven millions of leaves, exposing a surface of two hundred thousand square feet, or about five acres of foliage...
Page 49 - After being detached it is flattened by presenting the convex side to heat, or by pressure. In either case it is charred on both surfaces to close the transverse pores, previously to its being sold.
Page 49 - Trees that are never barked are said to die at the age of 50 or 60 years. The bark is taken off for the first time when the tree is about fifteen years old ; it soon grows again, and may be rebarked three times, the bark improving every time till the tree attains the age of thirty years. It is taken off in sheets or tables, much in the same way as oak or larch bark is taken from the standing trees in this country. After being detached it is flattened by presenting the convex side...
Page 179 - ... less consequence — in fact it is far better to cut them down ; for they make the climate too moist and cold, and prevent the successful cultivation of the soil. The present agricultural condition of Finland, in Northern Russia, establishes this fact ; for the removal of its woods has dried up its swamps and forwarded cultivation, whilst it has rendered the climate milder and more habitable.
Page 62 - ... which is put forth into the atmosphere during the vegetative season. In order to verify this truth, it is only necessary to select branches, the leaves of whose side-shoots are annually put forth as leaf-clusters, and which therefore take a minimum of development, and consequently exercise the smallest possible amount of physiological influence on the branch, and where powerful growths are suddenly succeeded by growths greatly retarded. One such branch now lies before me, seven years old, whose...
Page 182 - The sea-sand having overflowed the country situated in the neighborhood of the Gulf of Gascogne, on the western coast of France, and threatened to make it valueless and uninhabitable ; Bremontier, a resident of the province, succeeded in opposing an effectual barrier to its further progress by planting a wood. He first of all planted the sand-loving...
Page 61 - ... which lose their conical figure or outline considered collectively, and, spreading out on all sides, form a dome-shaped or hemispherical top or crown. This is particularly grand in the horsechestnut, the lime-tree, and the elm, which...
Page 38 - If a transverse section of a young beech-tree is examined, it will be found to consist of a number of concentrical and almost circular beds or layers of wood, ensheathing one another about a common centre, which is occupied by a canal of pith, the whole being covered by the bark formed on the outside of the stem. The longitudinal section, on the contrary, shows that the stem is composed of a series of superposed and hollow elongated cones, the old conical growth, or woody layers of the last and previous...

Bibliographic information