ORNAMENTAL TREES. 25 



tending east into the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. The 

 most interesting point is this : children inherit the charac- 

 teristics of their parents ; and even the seeds of trees carry 

 with 'them and perpetuate the constitutions, delicate or 

 strong, that the region in which they were produced devel- 

 oped in the parent plants. The seeds of the Douglas spruce 

 from the Rocky Mountains produce trees which are as hardy 

 here in New England as the cedars on our hillsides ; while 

 plants raised from the seeds of the same tree growing in the 

 milder, moister climate of the Pacific States, fail entirely to 

 adapt themselves to our New-England climate, as, indeed, do 

 all the trees, with hardly an exception, from the region west 

 of the Rocky Mountains. Therefore, having an insufQcient 

 knowledge of the distribution of a species, we cannot say 

 that an}^ particular tree is hardy, and will serve our purposes 

 as material for forest or ornamental planting ; but we must 

 know, in the case of widely distributed species, the exact 

 physical conditions of the particular locality from which the 

 individual was obtained. 



Massachusetts herself, wonderfully rich in arborescent 

 species, belongs botanically to the Appalachian flora, — a flora 

 which contains a larger variety of trees than that of any 

 region of similar extent in the north temperate zone, with 

 the single exception of Western Asia. 



The Appalachian flora, which embraces the plants of 

 Canada and all the Northern States east of the Mississippi 

 River, descends along the Alleghany Mountains as far as 

 Georgia, and, in the high mountains of North Carolina, 

 reaches, in the multiplication of tree species, its greatest 

 development: here, in a comparatively small area, are more 

 than twice as many species of trees as grow naturally in all 

 the continent of Europe. 



The climate of this region is, from its great altitude, not 

 unlike that of New England ; and the trees of all the Appa- 

 lachian flora, and especially those of the high Southern 

 mountains, thrive here in Massachusetts. The trees of this 

 flora are beautiful and varied ; and, if we wish to secure to 

 our plantations a certainty of permanent success, we must 

 turn to our own forests for our best material, and avail our- 

 selves of the benefit of Nature's own selection. 



Our New-England forests are everywhere famed for the 



