CALIFORNIA'S ARBOR DAY A Plea for More General Tree-Planting. FORESTS ARE NECESSARY. The Prrmvation cf the Nation, of tba Earth, Depends on the Freieivatioa of the Trees. Written for The Moexino Caii. Man In his vanity goes striding up and down the earth, destroyine whatever ha likts for his pleasure or pront, and foolishly imagining that all things were made for him. But it is written in the Book not that tha beautiful things of earth were created for him, but that he was created for them. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding 6eed, the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed in in itself upon the earth. And the earth brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind, and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day." So you see the trees stood third in the order of creation, but man stands sixth and last. When the trees disappear man must disappear. "And God said. Behold, I have given you every herb bearing geed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Plutarch tells us that Alexander planted "THE HIGIILASDS." The Cross ol Tree* May Be Seen on the Hillside. in Persia every tree and herb of Greece, and that it w;i3 a great source of lamentation to him that he could not make the Greek ivy grow on tbe tower of Babel. It is high time to put away from our literature that fiction about this great man Bitting down by the seabeach and weeping that there wero no more worlds to conquer. There is no foundation for it. lie never came to the sea in all that mnd march from Siberia to India and although his journal, of which Plutarch often speaks, is entirely lost to us, we know, as well as we can know anything in ancient history, that he mourned not tnat he could not destroy, but that he could not restore. He was the first great tree-planter. And it may interest some of our veterans to know that he was the first man who pensioned his soldiers. lie was truly Alexander the Great; not great because' he conquered Persia, but because he panted Persia. When I lived in Washington, trying in my feeble fashion to induce tree - planting there and up and down the worn-out and barren banks of the Potomac, I used to see In the Senate and other high places of the nation big. coarse lumber barons from the great Northwest. These lumber barons imd mowed down miles and hundreds of miles of forests, woods that held back the waters that are now drowning cut the fertile Stales on the Lower Mississipi. They had made their millions, paved their ruthless way to prominence, and so sat serenely at the head of the nation while the South was devastated by flood and the great Noithwe*t was swept by tiaraes. Who does not recall the time when John Hay, the poet, a true and truthful man, was f-ent by the New York Tribune to report the fearful facts about the buruine towns? How many bodies in a single well? Old men, young men, maidens, mothers, with babes in their arm;, all leaping in together. It is too terrible to repeat! And the great lumber barons sitting serenely in the Senate. And no paper, no person daring to point a finger or say one word ol rebuke. But let us get away from this destruction of the world as fast »s possible and turn to the plan of helping to restore it. Only you must read columns, chaoters.vorames between the lines along here. Understand, these resinous pinetops tossed by millions and billions along the. ground and left to parch in the sun made a flame that burned the very earth ; not even a shrub or root left alive. And so when the rains fell and the snows melted, then mud, ashes and all things swept seaward, filled rivers, covered fields, buried and made desolate a hundred tboutacd hearthstones. Talk about the slickens and debris of California; why that was child's work in the Sierras compared to the ruin and the destruction at the Lead of the Mississippi and at ihemoutu of the Mississippi. And the pompous lumber barons sitting serenely in the Senate year after year, vnar after year. And the floods and the fires aud the Ores and the floods year after year and year after ye ir. And nobody daring to point a finger. True, there had been bills in Congress, appropriations, and a great engineer, Captain Eads, tltc man to first span the gieat river wiih iron, had been set to work. Jetties, dikes, dams end all that nt the mouth of the river; but this was rather to keep the river open to navigation and did little good for the drgwning States in the South and no good at $11 for the burning ones in the North. You see he dared say nothing to or about the lumber barons, for it was they who employed and paid him; and they, or rather their influence, could dismiss or beggar him. Again let me beg you read lots between the lines here. I was sent by the Independent to report on these jetties at tne mouth of the river at the time of one of the great flood*. 1 went from New Orleans to the jetties as the guest of Captain EaJs. Breckinridge of Arkansas then in Copgrea?, and, I think, Congressman Stunner of California and a lot of others were along. And it was from Captain Jv-id-, on that occasion, that I learned so much of the importance of trees to man. What a strange sight. You view the Mississippi as if riding a horse down hill. The land is below you. You look down into the fields and farms on either side of the river. You see children down there playing in the road at the base of the mighty dikes of earth, twenty, forty, fifty fret below you. These dikes or levees have been raised year after year by each State; each parish lias its task, its watchmen, trained levee men. The cost has been hundreds of million!*, ami each year it is coming to be more costly to keep the mighty river in its place. Some day soun, if things go on in the way they have been going at the other end of the river, all this Southern side of the Union will be lost entirely to the civilized world, and where New Orleans stands only a church spire will point, like a reproving finger, to the serene lumber barons in the Senate. And what singular sights and sounds on the nudity delta! A vast, drear level of sea grass*, and the river booming through the reeds, a rungs of mud and slime, in a dozen branches to tha gulf. At night you see little hills of fire; y a hear the sulutier and gurgle of uiud aud water, and flames shoot up like rockets Irom the water. Four great mud-tugs are constantly on hand to remove these little mud volcanoes thatspring up in a n ght and inn.edu navigation. I marvel that the world knows so little about the mouth of the Mississippi. It is a very sickly place. You see it is all In a state of fermentation here. The leaves, logs, slickens, debris, soil, the very soil and fertility of fourieeu States, are fermenting here. The warm waters of the gulf here under the path of the sun convert all this into a vast yeast-pot. Sometimes even while the men are at work ou one of these little mud mountains that rose up in a night vomiting fire from the top it suddenly sinks, taking men back with it. Aud the lumber barons sitting serenely In the Senate 1 "It is no use. We are working at the wrong end." These were the constant words of Captain Eads to me. His last words were: "We must restore tbe trees ai th« other end or this whole region will be a marsh and the mouth of the river closed. Try ami get everybody up there to plant trees." Coming back to California I f und that our- own river in a small way bad been shaven to the bone at the head. Sttll w« are not in such peril here, for the river if stone and snow and will endure a heap. Here let me say, now that mining may b« resumed, that if the trees are preserved in the mountains jou may work the mines with but little danger of debrß But, of course, the lumber barons will iay all loss and blame at the door of ttta miner-". But to get alon*. Visiting mf dear old friend of other days. AdolpU Sutro, he asked in»« to plant a tree— an old custom in Europe. Finding he had planted millions of trees and had trees to gl?« to all who would plant, the idea of an arbor day, already in li>e air. perhaps, began to take solid loriu. The Call took up the matter and kept it up month after moo til. The women took it up— 3uch women as Mrs. John Vance Cheney, Mrs. Harr Wagnor. Mis* Coolbrith, aud so on. Sutro offered 40,000 trees to tbe 40,000 school-children to plant. Mrs. Chenev baid, 'Let us plant l'orba Buena Island!" The idea took and spread like a forest fire. General Howard came forward with men, the Secretary of the Navy sent ships, Sutro inspected the island, found the soil rich and deep, ex-Governor Perkins set tbe day, Uie 28th of November, and a day it was iiidet-d. Who can forget the scene, the ship*, the booming guns, the thousands and thousands of happy school-children, Sutro planting the first tree; dear old General Vallejoon horseback making his speech in Spanish, his very last speech and last public appearance; Senators, Governors, officers In slitteriug uniforms; a thousand pretty women, and gentle old General Howard carrying water up the hill all day with his onearin to water the children's trees? And then the fire that left the face of tn« island a blackened ruin and not one of oar trees alivp. "Plant again," said Sutro calmly. "Plant agaio," cried Howard. "We will plant them thrice if ueed be," shouted General Vallfjo. And so one of the tree planters bought a mountaiu side above Oakland quite out of dancer of fire. Sutra sent trees as before, Howard seat his men and the whole thing was gone over attain. Only this time there was more work aiul less play, or rather less pleasure. For the children who had helped establish Arbor day in California were not present, nor the ladies. The ceremonies this time were brief and sober. But the cross, the Arbor Day cross, was set up jn^t the same and in the name of the MXOOO schoolchildren of Sao Francisco and Oakland who bad helped set it up on the island that sweltering hot day in November. It is the right of those children and the richt of all who took part or Interest in that tree-planting to kuow that their Greek cross of California's Arbur day has flourished. Some of those children mint be very strong and tall by this time, for it was five year* ago; but there is not one of them ail go strong and tall as some of thosu trees now. You can see those trees forming the cross all the way from the higher streets of Sau Francisco ou a day of singular clearness, and here is a photograph of them. You see that the idea did not perish If tha trees did perish on the island; so nothing in lost: although it is indeed a pity that it should lie there idle and be only a blackened ruin all these years. So. ideas like this do not perish. They are in the line of creation; a part of tbe third day. "And God saw that it was good." Letters hare come from every State in the Union on the subject; the Idea is vital ond it is aggressive. School-children all over this State of ours nave their days and celebrations of Goa's third day of creation. It was only a few months ago that 1 went down to San Diezo, the city of palms, and helped H«rr Wagner ami Madge Moris, who did so much toward helping us here, to direct and encourage the children in planting trees there. Oh. the health, the clenn toil, the instruction, the useful education, the solid good there is in trying to restore mother earth to her primeval beauty, as when God gave her to man "for an inhrriiance." Meantime, let me say to the childion, the founders of California Arbor day, that this cross of tneirs near Oakland, which ran now be seen so far, shall not perish. Although, one by one, we the planters of it shall, one after cne, follow on after the way that good old General Vallejo has gi»i:e to the other si'ie of darkness, one of the planters of the cross has pitched his tent under it and tends it carefully. Ami wh'-n he is gone it will be left to thn children, the school-children of thetwo cities, perpetually. Only let us plant and plant and plant. Tbe preservation of this nation, of the earth, depends on the preservation of the trees. Joaquiv Milles. THE OLD KIRK OF OBAN. The Primitive Parish. Church Will Boss Be ft Thins: of til* rait. London Dally Graphic. The primitive oid parish church of Oban will soon be a thing of the past, and give way to an erection more in accordance with tbe time?. For tha new church the parishioners have already contributed £1000, and £1000 is forthcoming from certain committees of the Scottish Church. Dr. Stewart, The Kirk of Olxnt. moderator of the assembly, In the absence of the Duke of Argyll, opened a bazaar at Obau on behalf of the new church, and Dr. Norman Macleod also assisted. Ainoog tbe visitors taking part were Mr. H. M. Stanley and Mrs. Stanley. At Oban old church tbe old-fashioned Scottish service still prevails, the hymns being given out line by line, the congregation, who stand to pray and fit to sing, joining in at will, following mor* or less accurately the choir, which is sustained and started by a tuning-fork only. The Swedish mile is 7.U1 yards long and the Vienna post mile is 821K5 yards. AVER'S • m I ; BBi ■9l :-\J- :.-■ HAIR VIGOR Keeps the scalp ; clean, cool, healthy. The Best Dressing Restores hair which has become thin, faded, or gray. Dr. J. C. Ayer & Co. Lowell, Mass.