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FREAK TREES

OF THE

STATE OF NEW YORK

The New York State College of Forestry Syracuse University

FRANKLIN MOON Dean

Issued by the EXTENSION DEPARTMENT New York State College of Forestry Syracuse, New York

Material Prepared by Prof. GURTH WHIPPLE

FOREWORD

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods," in fact, everywhere in the woods, whether pathed or pathless, is the dwelling of pleasure. In the woods abides romance, mystery, music, laughter, beauty, inspiration, awe, rapture. None can escape the broadening vision, the excitement of the imagination, the poetic inspiration imparted by contact with the teeming harmony of woods life. Even the occasional discords are only minor notes that become part of one universal rythm.

TREES SURPASSINGLY INTERESTING

Added to their pleasure-giving there are their health administrations. None, who go into the woods, fail to feel the forest-refreshment to body and mind. Trees have many values and many attractions. They present such a wide diversity that they may be said to surpass in interest all other products of the soil. Their traditions, their ancient lineage, their physical properties are thought-absorbing; their beneficence and human-like habits touch a responsive chord in man. Much about them is as deep a mystery as the farthermost star.

FREAK TREES ATTRACTIVE

Tree shapes are generally beautiful even in distortion. Freak trees attract the attention of all travellers. Probably they cause more comment and speculation than almost any other phase of the forest. They excite wonder; they challenge our power of scrutiny and observation; they cause the beholder to stop, to examine and to ponder. They are sometimes inexplicable. They defy natural laws, as we know them, that govern tree life, in a way that baffles our understanding.

Freak trees often save the camper, the hunter and the explorer from disaster. Trees that do not look like the vast majority of their fellows compel attention and impress the memory, identifying locations, streams and trails, and thus often lead the lost like a guiding hand safely from the wilderness. The true woodsman consciously and unconsciously is ever looking for freak trees when he is traveling in a new country. Freak trees are landmarks, good guides, good friends.

NATURE AND ACCIDENT CAUSE FREAKS

Why do trees take on abnormal shapes? Is it something in the character of the tree or is it due to accident? The results of this contest indicate that tree-freaks are due to both causes the same as in the animal kingdom. It would seem that a close parallel to the fortunes and misfortunes of humanity may be traced in trees, which of things inanimate are the constant and most useful companions of men. Trees, like ourselves are products of their surroundings. They are favored or injured in their development by the changes that time brings in its march of years.

The Freak Tree Contest was for New York State trees only. The contest covered the period of spring, summer and fall in 1925. Many lovers of the woods took part in the contest and sent photographs far too numerous to publish in one leaflet. We have, however, reproduced within these pages some of the most interesting pictures. The contest was intended to encourage observation of the forest, to arouse interest in trees and thereby aid in creating public concern for the protection and increase of the forest.

MANY SPECIES REPRESENTED

Hickory, beech, maple, elm, locust, poplar, birch, ash, cucumber, basswood, hemlock, pine, cedar, spruce, sumach, and apple were represented in the contest. While practically all of our common forest trees evidently take on unusual shapes under favorable conditions the tree apparently most given to abnormal growth is the elm. There were four times as many photographs of freak elm trees submitted as any other species. Maple comes next with beech and birch following closely.

No section of the State seems to be particularly favored with freak trees. It would appear that hardwoods or broad leaf tree families take on malformations and curious twists and turns more generally than the softwoods or conifers.

SELECTING WINNERS, BIG PROBLEM

Choosing the winners was rather a difficult problem. A marked divergence of opinion developed on the part of the seven judges who made the selections. The committee was composed of a forest botanist and pathologist, a wood technologist, a landscape architect, an expert in woodcraft and nature study, a professional forester, a collector of photographs of freak trees and a newspaper man.

The pictures were judged from the viewpoint of their shape and form that seemed to be contrary to the nature of the species the freak trees represented.

Prizes were awarded as follows: .00 for the first prize, .00 for the second, .00 for the third, .00 for the fourth, and four prizes of .00 each.

PRIZE WINNERS

HONORABLE MENTION

TREES NOT ELIGIBLE

Our Heritage

Now let us heal and restore where we trample and plunder, Cleansing and saving our shallowing rivers and rills, Lending new life to the field we have ravaged and beggared, Calling new forest to gladden the desolate hills.

Then though we pass from the land that our fathers bequeathed us, Mountain and river and wood shall our message renew; "This is the land that we loved; oh, be faithful, our children! Fair was it left to us; fairer we leave it to you!"

The New York State College of Forestry

Syracuse University

Transcriber's Note

Standardized names and addresses of pictures as italic.

Stretched on a table in one of the anterooms of the Convention; his head leaning against a chair; his fractured jaw supported by a handkerchief passed round the top of his head; a glass with vinegar and a sponge at his side to moisten his feverish lips; speechless and almost motionless, yet conscious!--there lay Robespierre--the clerks, who, a few days ago, had cringed before him, now amusing themselves by pricking him with their penknives, and coarsely jesting over his fall. Great crowds, likewise, flocked to see him while in this undignified posture, and he was overwhelmed with the vilest expressions of hatred and abuse. The mental agony which he must have experienced during this humiliating exhibition, could scarcely fail to be increased on hearing himself made the object of unsparing and boisterous declamations from the adjoining tribune.

These few facts and observations respecting the career of Robespierre, enable us to form a tolerably correct estimate of his character. The man was a bigot. A perfect Republic was his faith, his religion. To integrity, perseverance, and extraordinary self-denial under temptation, he united only a sanguine temperament and moderate abilities for the working-out of a mistaken principle. Honest and zealous in his purpose, his conduct was precisely analogous to that of all religious persecutors--sparing no pain or bloodshed to accomplish what he believed to be a good end. Let us grant that he was a monomaniac, the question remains as to his general accountability. If he is to be acquitted on the score of insanity, who is to be judged? Not so are we to exempt great criminals from punishment and obloquy. Robespierre knew thoroughly what he was about; and far as he was misled in his motives, he must be held responsible for his actions. Before entering on the desperate enterprise of demolishing all existing institutions, with the hope of reconstructing the social fabric, it was his duty to be assured that his aims were practicable, and that he was himself authorised to think and act for the whole of mankind, or specially commissioned to kill and terrify into his doctrines. Instead of this, there is nothing to shew that he had formed any distinct scheme of a government to take the place of that which he had aided in destroying. All we learn is, that there hovered in his mind's eye some vague Utopia, in which public affairs would go on very much of themselves, through the mere force of universal Benevolence, liberated from the bosom of Nature. For his folly and audacity in nourishing so wild a theory, and still more for the reckless butcheries by which he sought to bring it into operation, we must, on a review of his whole character, adhere to the popular belief on the subject. Acquitted, as he must necessarily be, of the charge of personal ambition, he was still a monster, only the more dangerous and detestable for justifying murder on the ground of principle.

W.C.

INFANT SCHOOLS IN HUNGARY.

The Austrian government has for some years been exerting itself, in connection with the clergy, for the improvement and spread of education in all the provinces of the empire, being anxious to do all in their power to save the country from those excesses which are so often found in connection with ignorance. As an Englishman, living in friendly intercourse with members of the imperial family, and many persons high in the administration, I am happy to avow my thorough conviction, that such, pure and simple, is the object held in view in the establishment of schools throughout the empire, and above all, in that of the infant schools, which are now planted in every place where there exists a sufficiency of population. I have all along taken a deep interest in these little seminaries in the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, and am highly sensible of the liberal and humane principles on which they are conducted.

Each contains from two to three hundred children, between one and a half and five years of age, all of them being the offspring of the humbler classes, and many of them orphans. All are instructed in the same room, but classed apart; that is, the girls occupy one half of the apartment, and the boys the other, leaving an avenue between them, which is occupied by the instructors. The boys are under the superintendence of a master, and the girls under that of a mistress. Both, however, teach or attend to the various necessities of either, as circumstances may require. Infants too young to learn, and those who are sent, either because they are orphans, or because the extreme poverty of the mother obliges her to do outwork, are amused with toys and pictures, all, however, of an instructive nature, and which the elder children delight to exhibit and explain to them in their own quaint little ways. I have frequently seen an infant, scarcely able to walk, brought in for the first time, and left on one of the benches of the school-room, surrounded by those already initiated. The alarm its new position occasioned to the little creature, at thus suddenly finding itself abandoned by the only person with whom it was familiar, in the midst of a multitude of unknown faces, can easily be imagined. A flood of tears was the first vent to its feelings, accompanied by a petulant endeavour to follow its parent or nurse. It was immediately, however, surrounded by a score of little comforters, who, full of the remembrance of past days, when their fears and their sadness were in like manner soothed and dissipated, would use a thousand little arts of consolation--one presenting a toy or picture, another repeating what has almost become a formula of kindly re-assurance, till smiles and sunshine would succeed to tears and clouds upon that little brow, and confidence and content to fear and mistrust. I have often seen the day thus pass with neophytes as a dream, only to be broken when the parent or nurse, returning to take them home, found them in the centre of a little joyous group, the gayest of the gay!

The children learn the first rudiments of religion, duty and obedience to their parents and teachers, spelling, &c. After the expiration of the time allotted to them here, they are sent to the normal schools, where they are instructed in all the various branches of education which are necessary to fit them for any situation or profession for which their several talents seem to have destined them.

We have already spoken of the deep interest we have taken in the progress of the infant schools. We visit them frequently, and attend all the examinations. On entering, it is scarcely possible to recognise in clean, orderly inmates, the dirty, ragged, quarrelling, scratching, screaming children of the back-streets, which, however, they were only a short time ago. All is changed: the miserable hut, the narrow street, and muddy lane, for a pretty room full of pleasant objects; the timid look and distrustful scowl, for sunny cheerfulness and open confidence. There is no unkind distinction among the lower classes in this country, and by this I mean the whole of the Austrian states. There being only two classes--the nobles and the commons--none of the commons despise each other, however poor or humble their situation may be. The barefooted orphan, kept and educated by charity or the state, is not an object of contempt or ridicule to the child of the prosperous artisan, who stands clothed in its little snow-white frock and pink ribbons beside its less fortunate companion. Neither is any distinction made on account of religion. The infant schools of the empire are for the children of all the poor--Catholic, Lutheran, evangelical, &c.; and the two belonging to Presburg, to which we here particularly allude, contain from sixty to seventy of the latter in every two hundred.

I was affected by this trivial circumstance, reflecting how many little brown boys like this there must be in various countries called civilised, who, for want of a refuge where love and light are predominant, remain the outcasts of the streets, and become the prey of vice and ignorance.

THE LOSING GAME.

'What's the use?' says I: 'there's no light, and the hands are all fast asleep.'

'No,' says he; 'to the captain's cabin I mean. There's a lamp there; and we can hear the oars of the boat, and be on deck again, and no one the wiser.'

Well, mates, I had some curiosity to get a glimpse of the captain's cabin, where I very seldom went, and never stayed long: so down we went, lighted up the lamp, and looked about us. There wasn't much, however, to see. It was a black little hole, with a brass stove and lockers, and a couple of berths, larboard and starboard, and a small picture of a fore-and-aft rigged schooner, very low in the water, and looking a reg'lar clipper; and no name to her. Well, mates, all at once I caught sight of a pack of cards lying on a locker. 'Here's a bit o' fun,' says I; 'Lawry, let's have a game;' and he agreed. So down we sat, and began to play 'put.' A precious greasy old lot of cards they were; and so many dirt-spots on them, that it required a fellow with sharp eyes to make out the dirt from the Clubs and Spades. However, we got on somehow. When one was ready to play, he knocked the table with his knuckles, as a signal to the other; and for hours and hours we shuffled and dealt and knocked until it was late in the night, which I ought to have told you was Saturday night. At last, just as we ended a game, and when we were listening if a boat was coming, before beginning another, we heard the Yarmouth clocks ring twelve.

'Put up the cards,' says Lawrence; 'I'll not play more.'

'Because,' says he, and he stammered a little--'because it's Sunday.'

Well, mates, I had forgotten all my notions of that kind, and so I laughed at him. But it was no use.

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