10 TREES OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



enumerating as many kinds of trees as the poet could call to 

 mind, — 



"The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall, 



The Vine-propp Elme, the Poplar never dry, 



The builder Oake, sole king of forests all, 



The Aspine good for staves, the Cypress funerale, 



with thirteen more in the next stanza. Every one knows that 

 a natural forest never contains such a variety of species." 

 The other trees mentioned are the laurel, fir, willow, yew, 

 birch, sallow, myrrh, beech, ash, olive, platane, holm, maple ; 

 in all twenty. Now the forest nearest to Boston which has 

 been left undisturbed, and it is within four miles of the city, 

 in Brookline, contains, in less than half a mile's space, the 

 white pine, the red cedar, the elm, the large-leaved poplar, 

 the white oak, the aspen-leaved poplar, called aspen by our 

 ancestors, from its resemblance to the tree of that name in 

 England, the willow, two or three species, the poplar-leaved 

 birch, most near akin to the European, the ash, the beech, the 

 plane, or button-wood, the red-flowering maple, — to correspond 

 with those of the same name, — the hemlock, the tupelo, the 

 spruce, the pitch pine, the alder, the shellbark, the hornbeam, 

 the leverwood, to stand against the others named ; and more- 

 over the red oak, the black, and the swamp oak, the sugar 

 maple, the yellow birch, the black birch, the square-nut hick- 

 ory, the pig-nut, the bitter -nut, the chestnut, and the linden, 

 all growing as they were planted by the hand of nature. If it 

 be objected that it is unfair to enumerate several species of one 

 genus, it may be answered that they are all quite as unlike each 

 other as are the willow and sallow, or the poplar and aspen 

 of Spencer's catalogue. It is true that we do not often find in 

 Massachusetts so great a variety in the same wood, except upon 

 soil from the pudding-stone or conglomerate formation. The 

 various ingredients of that rock seem to furnish the materials 

 necessary for the ready growth of every kind of tree of our 

 climate. 



5. In a country so much exposed as ours is, in consequence 

 of the remarkable clearness of the atmosphere, to the burning 

 heat of the sun, the use of trees for shade is not one of the least 



