ILLUSTRATED HANDBOOK OF 

 AMERICAN TREES 



HANDBOOK of the Trees of the 

 Northern United States and 

 Canada East of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, by Romeyn Beck Hough. Pub- 

 Hshed at Lowville, N. Y., by the 

 author, 1907. 



The American forester cannot com- 

 plain of a dearth of popular books on 

 forestry and forest trees. He could 

 even occasionally wish that the num- 

 ber might be smaller, and the con- 

 tents better, with greater claim of or- 

 iginality, if not of facts, at least of 

 form. Popular books, as a rule, are 

 not expected to contribute to the 

 actual wealth of knowledge; but by 

 spreading the already acquired knowl- 

 edge among the masses, they prepare 

 the ground for the assimilation of new- 

 ideas, and thus make scientific pro- 

 gress easy. It is a mistaken notion 

 that popular or elementary books can 

 be written by persons who have them- 

 selves acquired a merely elementary 

 knowledge of things. The best pop- 

 ularizers of science are those who 

 know most. The well known English 

 physicist, Tyndall, was the most fa- 

 mous popularizer of physics ; and so in 

 their respective Hues were Huxley, 

 Haeckel, and a score of other scien- 

 tists. 



Mr. Hough's book is unquestion- 

 ably a popular book in the sense that 

 the facts about our forest trees are 

 presented in a simple, plain, compre- 

 hensive manner — so comprehensive, 

 in fact, that one can dispense almost 

 entirely with the text, and merely by 

 studying the photographs form a very 

 clear idea of the characteristic feat- 

 ures of each species. It is really an 

 herbarium, composed not of dried spe- 

 cimens, but of photographs which 

 show the essential organs of the trees 

 in their most natural condition. This 

 book, therefore is really a tool, a ready 

 means for comparing the characteris- 

 tics of the different species without re- 



sorting to herbarium collections, which 

 are not always available, and which al- 

 ways consume a great deal of time. 



The book covers only the trees of 

 the Northern and Eastern United 

 States ; to each species is devoted two 

 pages — one consists of a full-page plate 

 showing the buds, leaves, and fruit; 

 and the other contains in part text, 

 and in part photographs of the bark 

 and of the anatomic structure of the 

 wood, together with a map showing in 

 shaded lines the distribution of the 

 species. The leaves and the fruits of 

 the trees are shown on a background 

 marked into squares, each side of 

 which is one inch. Such a back- 

 ground enables one to determine at a 

 glance the relative size of the different 

 organs of the tree, and there is no 

 need of lengthy and tedious descrip- 

 tions of the size of the buds, cones, 

 etc. ; facts which merely tax the mem- 

 ory without leaving a vivid picture of 

 the proportion of the organs. The 

 photographs and the maps really tell 

 everything one would like to know 

 about the tree, and there is very little 

 room left for description. This graph- 

 ic representation of the facts by means 

 of photographs leaves a more lasting 

 impression than the most accurate 

 word description could do. 



The reproduction of the parts of 

 trees are not imitations of nature, but 

 Nature herself looks out from each 

 page of the book, so true are the pho- 

 tographs and so clearly do they show 

 the characteristic features of each spe- 

 cies. The photographs are taken from 

 the trees in the forest, and any one 

 who has ever attempted to secure good 

 reproductions of forest trees will ap- 

 preciate the amount of labor, patience, 

 and skill that were required to bring 

 together such an enormous number of 

 most excellent photographs, not only 

 of the trunks, but what is far more 



