It is wonderful how often instinct has anticipated the practical lessons of science. Long before comparative anatomy taught us the characteristics of our digestive organs the testimony of our natural predilections indicated the advantages of a frugal diet. Long before modern hygiene pointed out the perils of breathing the atmosphere of unventilated dormitories the evidence of our senses warned us against the foulness of that atmosphere. And ages before the researches of agricultural chemistry began to reveal the protective influence of arboreal vegetation, an instinct which the child of civilization shares with the rudest savage revolted against the reckless destruction of fine woodlands, and sought to retrieve the loss by surrounding private homes with groves and parks. The love of forests is as natural to our species as the love of rocks to the mountain-goat. Trees and tree-shade are associated with our traditions of paradise, and that the cradle of the human race was not a brick tenement or a wheat-farm, but a tree-garden, is one of the few points on which the genesis of Darwin agrees with that of the Pentateuch. The happiest days of childhood would lose half their charm without the witchery of woodland rambles, and, like an echo of the foreworld, the instincts of our forest-born ancestors often awake in the souls of their descendants. City children are transported with delight at the first sight of a wood-covered landscape, and the evergreen arcades of a tropical forest would charm the soul of a young Esquimaux as the ever-rolling waves of the ocean would awaken the yearnings of a captive sea-bird. The traveler Chamisso mentions an interview with a poor Yakoot, a native of the North Siberian ice-coast, who happened to get hold of an illustrated magazine with a woodcut of a fine southern landscape: a river-valley, rocky slopes rising toward a park-like lawn with a background of wooded highlands. With that journal on his knees the Yakoot squatted down in front of the traveler’s tent, and thus sat motionless, hour after hour, contemplating the picture in silent rapture. “How would you like to live in a country of that kind?” asked the professor. The Yakoot folded his hands, but continued his reverie. “I hope we shall go there if we are good,” said he at last, with a sigh of deep emotion.