FOREIGN AND NATIVE TREES. 153 



summer six weeks, and to retain for that time the beauty 

 of the forests. I find that thiit is true of nearly all the trees. 

 I find one other thing, -which I ought to state, which may be 

 interesting to some of you. I have planted European trees 

 upon one of the poorest lots of land that I know of, down close 

 by the ocean ; one of those promontories that run into Boston 

 Bay ; poor as poor can be. I have planted all the European 

 trees, side by side with our American trees, and I have found, 

 in every instance except one, that the European trees grow 

 better and more rapidly than the American. Take the 

 English oak. I have every variety of the English oak, — ' 

 twenty or more trees ; and all of them are growing better 

 than the hardiest of our oaks, even the red oak, which is the 

 finest and quickest grower. So it is with the beech ; so it is 

 with the ash, most preeminently. There is one exception, 

 — it is not apparentl}'- an exception, though it is really an 

 exception, — the European birch, which they consider the 

 most beautiful tree in Europe ; and it is. Our little gray, 

 commonly called Avhite birch, which grows everywhere here, 

 is so like it that I cannot tell them apart at the distance of 

 fifteen feet ; that is, until they get to some height. Our 

 little birch never grows to any considerable height, but I have 

 several of those European birches that have grown fifty or 

 sixty feet high within the last twenty-three years. Our largest 

 birch, the canoe-birch, grows very rapidly, — certainly quite 

 as rapidly as the European birch. It does not grow so large 

 at the stem, but it keeps up its size very much higher, so 

 that, when they are of just about the same height, if you cut 

 them off at ten feet from the grouud, the diameter would be 

 greater in the European than in the American ; but if you cut 

 them off" at thirty feet from the ground, it would be greater 

 in the American. So it is with the maples. They have two 

 maples in England of great value, and only two. I have them 

 growing perfectly well. They grow a great deal better, I am 

 sorry to say (I do not know why), than our corresponding 

 trees. In the place which I chose, I say because it is so 

 bad a place, because it is so unfavorable to the growth of 

 trees that I might give them all the disadvantages possible, 

 the rock- maple would not grow ; I could not persuade it to 

 grow ; it refused to grow in such poor land ; but the English 



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