Trees and Schools

FROM NAUVOO TO SALT LAKE. 493 the Bluffs, we found the Saints scattered in small camps up and down the east bank of the Missouri river and its creeks, for about twenty-five miles, building cabins, cutting hay and otherwise pre- paring for winter. (to be continued.) Trees and Schools. If any person should be peculiarly interested in trees, it would seem to be those who are at school, and who are especially engaged in the use of books, for the word book is the same as the old English or Anglo-Saxon word boc, which means a beech tree. The German word, buck, (book) is almost the same as buche^ (beech); and substantially similar words are found in the Danish, Icelandic and Gothic languages, because before the invention of printing, the books of the people speaking these languages were written 'commonly on pieces of the bark or wood of the beech tree. Then those who are studying Latin know that the word liber means both bark and book, which points to a similar usage. And those who have entered upon the study of the Greek language have learned that biblos, which means book, also means the inner bark of the papyrus plant, because the old Egyptians used to write upon its smooth and white surface. From the name of this plant again comes directly and easily our word paper, while to go back to liber, we have from that our word library, or a collection of books, and from biblos again our word Bible, or the book of books. And now our books are often literally made of the trees. Only, instead of taking chips or blocks of the beech tree to write upon, as our ancestors did, we grind the trees up into pulp, and, having spread it out into thin sheets, the printer then prints upon them lessons of geography, or arithmetic, or history, and, lo! the beech tree and other trees also come into the school room to help us in our studies. Every time, also, that we turn the leaves in