o love
them for the refreshment there is in their living presence, rather than
to consider them merely for the timber value. But the point of view
differs immensely with one's occupation. I remember finding in the
depths of an Alleghany forest a comparatively rare native orchid, then
new to me--the round-leaved _or orbicular habenaria_. While I was
gloating over it with my camera a gray-haired native of the neighborhood
joined me, and, to my surprise, assisted in the gloating--he, too, loved
the woods and the plants. Coming a little later to a group of
magnificent hemlocks, with great, clean, towering trunks reaching up a
hundred feet through the soft maples and yellow birches and beeches
which seemed dwarfed by these veterans, I exclaimed in admiration.
"Yes," he said, "them's mighty fine hemlocks. I calc'late thet one to
the left would bark near five dollars' wuth!" On the rare plant we had
joined in esthetic appreciation, but the hemlock was to the old
lumberman but a source of tan-bark.

This search for tannin, by the way, is to blame for much wanton
destruction. Young hemlocks, from four to six inches in diameter, are
felled, stripped of their bark, and left cumbering the ground, to invite
fire and to make of the woods an unkempt cemetery. The fall of a tree
from natural causes is followed by the interesting and beauty-making
process of its mossy decay and return to the forest floor, furnishing in
the process nourishment for countless seedlings and plants. A tree
felled in maturity under enlightened forest management is all removed
for its timber, and leaves the ground clear; but the operations of the
bark-hunter leave only hideous destruction and a "slash" that is most
difficult to clear in later years.

This same hemlock makes a most impressive forest. To walk among primeval
hemlocks brings healing to the mind and peace to the soul, as one
realizes fully that "the groves were God's first temples," and that God
is close to one in these beneficent solitudes, where petty things must
fall away, vexations cease, and man's spiritual nature absorb the
message of the forest.

[Illustration: Hemlock Hill, Arnold Arboretum (Boston)]

I wonder how many of my readers realize that an exquisite bit of real
hemlock forest lies not five miles from Boston Common? At the Arnold
Arboretum, that noble collection of trees and plants, "Hemlock Hill" is
assuming deeper majesty year after year as its trees gain age and size.
It pre