---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 14
number: 6
published: 1911-04
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Trees and Schools," *Improvement Era* 14, no. 6 (April 1911): 493.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1406unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1406unse
start_page: 493
end_page: 493
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1911-04)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1406unse
  publication_year: 1911
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1911, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Trees and Schools

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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