ion to the bare
trees and notice the characteristic forms of the various species, the
manner in which their branches are developed and arranged among
themselves, for a knowledge of these things will often enable one to
distinguish the different kinds of trees more readily and certainly
than by any other means. The foliage often serves as an obscuring
veil, concealing, in part at least, the individuality and the
peculiarities of the trees. But if one is familiar with their forms of
growth, their skeleton anatomy, so to speak, he will recognize common
trees at once with only a partial view of them.

Some trees, as the oak, throw their limbs out from the trunk
horizontally. As Dr. Holmes says: "The others shirk the work of
resisting gravity, the oak defies it. It chooses the horizontal
direction for its limbs so that their whole weight may tell, and then
stretches them out fifty or sixty feet so that the strain may be
mighty enough to be worth resisting." Some trees have limbs which
droop toward the ground, while those of most, perhaps, have an upward
tendency, and others still have an upward direction at first and later
in their growth a downward inclination, as in the case of the elm, the
birch, and the willows. Some, like the oak, have comparatively few but
large and strong branches, while others have many and slender limbs,
like many of the birches and poplars.

The teacher should call attention to these and other characteristics
of tree-structure, drawing the various forms of trees on the
blackboard and encouraging the pupils to do the same, allowing them
also to correct each other's drawings. This will greatly increase
their knowledge of trees and their interest in them as well as in
Arbor Day and its appropriate observance.

[Illustration]

Programme for Arbor Day.

We give in this part of our manual a programme for Arbor Day
observance. It is presented not so much in the expectation that it
will be exactly copied as that it may serve as suggestion of what may
be done. We have added various selections from poets and prose writers
which may help those who are preparing for the proper observance of
Arbor Day. But these are only a few specimens from the great stores of
our literature. A little care and painstaking beforehand will furnish
an ample supply of the desired material, for our literature abounds in
such. Not the least of the benefits of the observance of Arbor Day is
the opportunity it gives for