MEMORIAL OAK.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXI, Issue 16690, 21 July 1916, Page 4

MEMORIAL OAK.

FOR THE LATE MR. JAS. AIKEN

CEREMONY AT VIRGINIA LAKE

Yesterday afternoon the St. John s Hill Beautifying Society commemorated the beneficent gift of £100 left by the late Mr James Aiken for the beaut<iication of the Virginia Lake Reserve. After the Mayoress, the Mayor and Cr Harkness (chairman of the Borough Reserves., Committee) had eacn planted trees, Cr. G. McCaul planted a memorial oak on a site overlooking tbe lake, about midway between the main entrance and the band rotunda.

A suitable memorial tablet is to be erected alongside the tree. The Mayor said that a tree had always been regarded as an appropriate symbol of human life. Our Norse ancestors. indeed, typified the whole creation under the symbol of the tree Igdrasy]], whose branches reached to Heaven, and each of whose leaves was a human life. In every age mankind had regarded the planting of a tree as a fitting monument of every noteworthy event. He trusted that the tree just planted would keep green and ■flourish like the memory of the departed citizen, whose active beneficence it commemorated. "~

Cr. Harknass said the deceased gentleman was his uncle, and had often •iad conversations with him which evinced his lively interest in the work of beautification.

Cr. McCaul expressed the wish that not merely the memorial oak. but all (,he reserve, would continue to grow in beauty, and that others would be led to follow the example 'set by the late Mr. Aiken.