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Introduction

STRANGE ADVENTURES IN NATURE'S WONDERLANDS A YEAR IN THE WONDERLAND OF TREES BY HALLAM HAWKSWORTH (FRANCIS B. ATKINSON) With Drawings by LORA PALMER ATKINSON and Many Other Illustrations CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO HOW AND WHY If we assume--as, of course, we do assume--that the public schools are for the public good, it is hard to imagine anything more necessary than the general appreciation and understanding of the beauty and usefulness of tree life and its vital relation to the national welfare.

I have been asked to include a book on this subject in the "Hawksworth" science series and, in the exercise of this high privilege of citizenship, have prepared the present volume. My endeavor has been to interest both the future citizen, who is now in school, and his parents; and, mindful of school conditions, so to present the matter that the use of the book as a text will not mean the addition of a new study, but give direction and emphasis to studies already in the curriculum--Civics, Agriculture, and Botany. The opportunities for correlation with Arithmetic, History, and Geography are also obvious and inviting. And since, in its economic phases, Forestry is, after all, merely a matter of good business practice, the study of it and its related commercial activities is particularly well calculated to give a grasp of the comparatively few, but immensely important, principles underlying the successful management of all business affairs, public and private. Though the reading of any book ought, no doubt, to give the most definite idea of its contents, still a few words from an author as to purpose and method are usually helpful. To put them briefly, then, the aims in this instance are: To impress young people, to whom it is primarily addressed, with the interest and importance of trees, the great dangers hidden in outdoor fires, the awful price we are paying for our carelessness and ignorance in the matter, and the imminent perils to our whole national life which these things involve. And if, like its predecessors in the Nature's Wonderland series, this book is found to be attractive for reading aloud in the family circle, it will help carry the fire-prevention and forest-development campaign over into adult territory. Such work seems to be needed there, even more than it is among the young citizens of the next generation; for the figures in that frightful "red ledger" of ours show that adults are availing themselves, to the full, of their larger opportunities for setting the woods afire! Yet the destruction of our remaining forests by fire continues, year after year. The annual burnings cover 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 acres, and during unusually dry years these figures may be much higher; as in 1924, when they reached 29,000,000.

I do not think, then, that any objection will be made to the fact that this little work has not presented its information in the conventional manner either of the text-book, which few adults outside the colleges ever read, nor yet in that of the daily newspaper, which everybody reads. From the current news of forest fires and the newspaper summaries of the official annual reports the public is kept well informed; so that if mere knowledge of what is being done and what ought to be done were sufficient, we should long ago have had matters as well in hand as have our sister commonwealths in Europe, where, in some instances, the forest interests of a community take care of a large proportion of the taxes. "WHAT TREE IS THAT?"

Because of the wide interest in the wonder and beauty of tree life I have endeavored to give this aspect of the subject due emphasis and thus, also, to forward the main object, the preservation and development of our fast-disappearing wooded areas. Says the dean of one of our great schools of forestry:1 (Elements of Forestry, by Franklin Moon, Dean, and Nelson Courtlandt Brown, Professor of Forest Utilization, in the New York College of Forestry at Syracuse University.

In a country where public opinion has such an important bearing on the enactment and enforcement of laws, the psychological value of shade-tree work and the aesthetic interest in forestry is extremely great. In connection with the popular appreciation of trees for their shade and beauty, there is a wide interest in the identification of trees--with a corresponding lack of knowledge--and frequently not a little chagrin, on the part of parents, at their inability to answer the inquiry, on woodland outings: "What tree is that?" Since this interest has large possibilities, special pains have been taken to supply means for the identification of an unusually wide variety of trees, with particular emphasis on two of the most popular and widely distributed, the Maples and the Oaks; and, first of all, by their leaves, since these are available through all the outdoor season and easily preservable.

The outlines of the leaves, in their various appropriate groupings, are all brought together on one page. It is sufficiently difficult, even for the trained observer, in making comparisons of form, to retain a detailed and accurate impression of a number of different leaves, unless he has them all under his eye at one and the same time. How difficult it must be, then, for the beginner to identify leaves with their pictured counterparts when these are scattered, according to the usual practice, throughout the many pages of a book.

Moreover, such illustrations are customarily grouped, not according to form, but according to their scientific classification, of which the beginner knows nothing. The only thing he knows is that the leaves he has gathered for identification have a certain shape, and the essential thing is to spread before him, for simultaneous inspection and comparison, as wide a variety as possible of leaves of similar shape. This is here done, both in the case of miscellaneous leaves and of the pages devoted entirely to the Oaks and the Maples; while leaves which exhibit characteristics of more than one family, such as those of the Chestnut-Oak, appear in both groupings. Besides this unconscious assumption on the part of the learned that the beginner already knows some of the very things he is trying to find out, another obstacle in the way of a wider initiation into the fascinating study of trees and tree life is the effect, in some instances, of the lingering tradition that illustrations are mainly for decoration, and of minor importance as compared with the text. As a consequence, in many books, even of a scientific nature, there is evident a lack of co-operation between author and artist. As an example, take the two following outlines of the leaf of the White Poplar. The one on the left is from a field-book for Boy Scouts, the other from a photograph of the same leaf in Illick's Tree Habits, where it is properly described as "Maple-like."

FRANCIS B. ATKINSON. ("Hallam Hawksworth.") LEONIA, N.J.

This book has the approval and authorization of the American Forestry Association. To that Association we are indebted for helpful suggestions and many illustrations.

A YEAR IN THE WONDERLAND OF TREES