TREE SURGERY
—Rally Day
—Obstacles
Trees Need Skillful Surgery More Often Than People Do—Superfluous Branches.
THE LESSON—That the life which wastes its strength in unnecessary efforts cannot bring forth the best fruits.
That the boys and girls may realize the sad results of forming habits which hinder growth, development and fruit-bearing, is one of the great objects of the teaching of the Sunday school. Rally Day is an especially appropriate time for a lesson along this line of thought.
The Talk.
"A stranger from the East was visiting a large fruit farm in the celebrated Hood River Valley in Oregon. He was astonished at the size and appearance of the growing apples, and he asked the owner of the fruit farm to tell him the secret of such wonderful results.
"'There is no secret at all,' responded the fruit raiser. 'You see, if a tree is allowed to do as it pleases, it usually covers itself with a vast number of useless branches and a multitude of leaves, which are of no benefit whatever except to make shade; and when a tree has too many branches and too many leaves it requires so much strength to keep them alive that there isn't enough left to put into the fruit. In other words, the tree can't bear large, fine fruit if it must also support a lot of useless branches and leaves.' This is the way an apple tree will grow if it is allowed to have its own way. [With the broad side of your green chalk, draw the general form of the tree, [Fig. 118]; add the trunk and dead branches in brown, and draw the grass with green, and the apples in red, completing [Fig. 118].]