Tasso, the author of a well-known metrical history, states distinctly, as you shall see in half a moment, that a tree upon one occasion discoursed with Major General Tancred,—­

“Pur tragge alfin la spada e con gran forza Percuote l’ alta pianta.  Oh, maraviglia! ——­quasi di tomba, uscir ne sente Un indistinto gemito dolente, Che poi distinto in voci.”

And then it goes on to tell the General how it once rejoiced in extensive hoops, wore a coal-scuttle on its head, and rubbed its face with prepared chalk,—­(w-w-w-hy! what was I saying? such a mistake!  I should say)—­was a woman by the name of Clorinda, and is still animated and sentient both in trunk and limbs, and that he will presently be guilty of murder, if he continues to hack her with his sword.

The celebrated explorer, Sir John Mandeville, relates in the history of his discoveries that he heard whole groves of trees talking to one another.  And when we come down to the present day, R.W.  Emerson, of Concord, asseverates that trees have conversed with him,—­that they speak Italian, English, German, Basque, Castilian, and several other languages perfectly,—­

  “Mountain speech to Highlanders,
  Ocean tongues to islanders,”—­

and that he himself was on one occasion transformed into a Pine (Pinus rigida) and talked quite a large volume of philosophy while in that condition.  Walter Whitman, Esq., author of “Leaves of Grass,” relates similar personal experience.  Tennyson, (Alfred,) now the Laureate of England, and upon whom the University of Oxford, a few years ago, conferred the title of Doctor of Laws, gives us a long conversation he once held with an Oak, reporting the exact words it said to him:  they are excellent English, and corroborate what I said above respecting the wisdom of trees.

If all this evidence, and I might add much more equally conclusive, did I think it necessary, does not, O skeptic, convince you of the humanity of trees, why, let me say that you hold for true a hundred things not based upon half so good testimony as this,—­that I have seen juries persuaded of facts, and bring in verdicts in accordance with them, not nearly so well authenticated as these,—­and that I have heard clergymen preach sermons two hours long, constructed out of arguments which they positively persisted you should regard as decisive, that were, to say the least, no better than those here advanced.  And now, if these things be so, in the words of the great Grecian, John P., what are you going to do about it?

Trees, like animals, are righteously sacrificed only when required to supply our wants.  A man does not go out into the fields and mutilate or destroy his horses and oxen:  let him treat the oaks and the elms with the same humanity.  I would that enough of the old mythology to which I have alluded, and which our fathers called religion, still lived among us to awaken a virtuous indignation in our breasts