420 STATE PO.MOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



nakedness; they relieve the eye; they are a never-ceasing well-spring of pleas- 

 ure that but endears itself as age sets his footprint on the decaying branch and 

 withering bough. 



Who, in the recollections of his early home, were he fortunate enough to 

 have passed his younger days surrounded by sylvan charms, has them not im- 

 pressed upon him all the more vividly from the associations that old trees carry 

 with them ? Apart from the infinite variety of form, size, and shape assumed 

 by trees, their variance is none the less striking in their manner of fruitage, 

 their dissimilarity in habit, and their diversity in colors of foliage. 



Nor must we forget the exquisite tints and gorgeous apparel that clothes our 

 trees in autumn, — their annual tribute to the passing year, as well as the effect 

 produced by the different colored berries and bark of many of our trees and 

 shrubs in the winter, such as the Primis (the Flamingo of the Swamps), the 

 Viburmim Oxycocns, the family of the Euonymus, the different varieties of the 

 Berberry, the coral-colored berries of the Mountain Ashes, the amber-hued 

 rind of the Golden Willow, the lustrous red bark of the Dog- Wood, and the 

 silvery sheen of the Birch. With all these means at his command, it becomes, 

 so to speak, an easy task for one imbued with a love for the beautiful, as mani- 

 fested in these, — Nature's most varied specimens of handiwork, — to produce, with 

 a little judicious attention, almost any desired effect in landscape gardening; 

 and by the planting of but a few trees and shrubs to give an entirely new 

 aspect to one's surroundings. 



On the other hand, while trees serve so materially to beautify and em- 

 bellish, they offer incentives equally as great in a pecuniary point of view to 

 those who will incur the trifling labor and expense that attend their j)lauting 

 and early care. 



The man who has surrounded his home with these objects of refinement and 

 beauty reaps his own reward, not only in the individual gratification which 

 can not fail to ensue therefrom, but equally as w^ell in the advanced value that 

 always accompanies this small labor and outlay. 



While we do not wish to savor of egotism, and while we acknowledge its 

 many short-comings, we would call attention to our own fair city of Eochester, 

 and ask what renders it so attractive to the stranger who enters its leafy pre- 

 cincts? Walk down its shaded streets, its closely planted avenues, pause before 

 its spacious and well-cultivated yards that surround so many of the houses of 

 both rich and poor, and the reason is at once manifest. 



Walk along the leafy avenues of New Haven, where the pride of our forests^ 

 — the American Elm, — waves its lissom branches in many a graceful curve 

 over the passer-by; and grateful for the welcoming shade, one instinctively 

 murmurs a benediction on the providence of those whose seed sown, now 

 brings forth its fruits a thousand fold. 



We will here take occasion to call attention to the effect that may be pro- 

 duced by a proper assortment, either planted singly or in groups, of those 

 varieties which present so great a diversity in the color of their foliage or flow- 

 ers. With, for instance, a bed of Magnolias (the light flowering Chinese), or 

 the Scarlet Japan Quince in the foreground, what an array of color can be 

 formed with a background of Forsythias in their yellow dress, or a group of 

 Judas trees in the full glory of their pink habiliments. 



And a little later in the season what contrasts can be made by a proper 

 placing of the different colored Hawthorns, the Philadelphus, the Magnolia 

 Soulangeana, the many colored Lilacs, and the hosts of other flowering Shrubs. 



