The common mistake in planting trees on small home grounds is to place the individual in the middle of the lawn. As a matter of design, the center of the lawn should be kept open, and trees, at any rate, should file along the boundaries. In our northern climate sturdy, protecting evergreens will naturally choose a north boundary, and the shady summer trees with heavy foliage will cast their comfortable shadows from the south side of the garden. The tree-lover who hopes to get the most satisfaction out of his hobby will not always wait to see his trees grow. It requires too many years. About the best way to do is to adopt a tract of well-grown woodland, and then to make the most of it. Improvement cuttings will come first; for the axe is as important as the spade, and trees have to be cut as well as planted. The best trees can be left and nursed and admired. If there is space enough, forest effects can be developed; roads and paths can be built; game-cover can be introduced, and wild life encouraged. Birds and boys and others friends will visit you in your woods, and the days will go by like a lusty ballad. Between you and me and the beech-tree, it will be a jolly, pleasant company. FOREST DAY SELMA LAGERLÖF On the mountain's broad back there had been a forest fire ten years before. Since that time the charred trees had been felled and removed and the great fire-swept area had begun to deck itself with green along the edges, where it skirted the healthy forest. However, the larger part of the top was still barren and appallingly desolate. Charred stumps, standing sentinel-like between the rock ledges, bore witness that once there had been a forest fire here; but no fresh shoots sprang from the ground. One day in the early summer all the children in the parish had assembled in front of the schoolhouse near the fire-swept mountain. Each child carried either a spade or a hoe on its shoulder and a basket of food in its hand. As soon as all were assembled they marched in a long procession toward the forest. The banner came first, with the teachers on either side of it. Then followed a couple of foresters and a wagon load of pine shrubs and spruce seeds; then the children. The procession did not pause in any of the birch groves near the settlements, but marched on deep into the forest. As it moved along the foxes stuck their heads out of their lairs in astonishment and wondered what kind of backwoods people these were. As they marched past the old coal pits where charcoal kilns were fired every autumn, the cross-beaks twisted their hooked bills and asked one another what kind of coalers these might be, who were now thronging the forest.