USES OF THE FORESTS. 7 



shire were stripped of their woods, they would be converted 

 into broad reaches of upland, from which most of their beauty- 

 would have departed. The striking feature in that charm- 

 ing country is the old forest, on the sides of its hills, here 

 and there irregularly broken in upon by cultivation. The 

 northern and southern sides of Boston are not essentially unlike 

 in their natural features ; yet the hills of Brookline and Rox- 

 bury, capped with hickory, and whose sides are clothed with 

 oaks and pines, give the impression of a rich and happy coun- 

 try, of which only pleasant memories are carried away, while 

 the bare hills of Chelsea suggest images of bleak and barren 

 desolation. Three or four trees upon Apple Island make it a 

 gem among the islands in Boston Harbor. What a scene would 

 the Bay present, if all the islands were so covered ! 



No element of beauty is so completely manageable as trees ; 

 and our resources in that respect are surprisingly great. Sit- 

 uated in the middle of the temperate zone, we have, in Massa- 

 chusetts, all the best of the deciduous trees, the oaks, elms, 

 beeches, ashes, hickories, walnuts, cherries, maples, the chest- 

 nut, linden and button -wood, of the temperate regions, together 

 with the finest of the evergreens, the pines, firs, spruces, cedars 

 and hemlock, and the delicate birches, of a more northern cli- 

 mate. Each one of these trees has its own peculiar and dis- 

 tinctly marked character, recognizable at a distance, and pro- 

 ducing an effect which needs not to be mistaken for that of any 

 other. Each has its own cycle of change, its own time of flow- 

 ering, and of perfecting its fruit, and of opening, maturing, 

 changing and casting its foliage. Each has its own shape and 

 its own color, distinguishing it from every other tree, even of 

 the species most nearly allied. Hence the endless variety of 

 forest scenery. Here are more than fifty elements shading off 

 and blending into each other in imperceptible gradations, ac- 

 cording as you recede from the coast to the interior, as yon go 

 north or south, or as you rise from the plain into the mountains. 

 We have here representatives of the vegetations of the warmer 

 and of the colder regions ; but as you go north, first the hicko- 

 ries, then most of the other nut-bearing trees, then others grad- 



