chestnut: he must become a tiller of the soil, before he can obtain the
products of the cereal herbs. The groves were likewise the earliest
temples for his worship, and their fruits his first offerings upon the
divine altar.

As man advances nearer to civilization, trees afford him the additional
advantage which is derived from their timber. The first houses were
constructed of wood, which enables him by its superior plastic
nature, compared with stone, to progress more rapidly in his ideas of
architecture. Wood facilitates his endeavors to instruct himself in
art, by its adaptedness to a greater variety of purposes than any
other substance. It is, therefore, one of the principal instruments of
civilization which man has derived from the material world. Though the
most remarkable works of the architect are constructed of stone, it
was wood that afforded man that early practice and experience which
initiated him into the laws of mechanics and the principles of art, and
carried him along gradually to perfection.

But as man is nomadic before he is agricultural, and a maker of tents
and wigwams before he builds houses and temples,--in like manner he is
an architect and an idolater before he becomes a student of wisdom; he
is a sacrificer in temples and a priest at their altars, before he is a
teacher of philosophy or an interpreter of Nature. After the attainment
of science, a higher state of mental culture succeeds, causing the mind
to see all Nature invested with beauty and fraught with imaginative
charms, which add new wonders to our views of creation and new dignity
to life. Man now learns to regard trees in other relations beside their
capacity to supply his physical and mechanical wants. He looks upon them
as the principal ornaments of the face of creation, and as forming the
conservatories of Nature, in which she rears those minute wonders of