84 Our Climatic Vicissitudes. [February, 



round clusters of white flowers ; the second, famous for its spicy, aro- 

 Diatic bark ; and the third for its nuts. 



It is not unusual to meet with parks and shrubberies composed of 

 foreign genera and species, carefully planted and nursed, in grounds 

 from whence a native and nobler growth has been destroyed, to give 

 them room. To slight and reject the products of our own soil for the 

 sake of that which is foreign, merely because it is foreign, is evidence 

 of a preposterous taste, against which we would earnestly protest. We 

 have, in our own American forests, species endowed with every trait 

 which we value in utility, ornament, or shade. Do we prize beauty of 

 foliage, leaves dark green, waxen, and shining ? Such are those of the 

 liquidambar (sweet gum), the liriodendron, and the laurel oak. Do we 

 ask for a heavy and sombre shade? Such have the beech, the maple, 

 and the elm. Do we admire the tree which clothes itself with gay and 

 brilliant flowers as well as leaves ? What can delight us more than 

 the florid cornus, the white thorn, the purple cercis, or the resplendent 

 tulip-tree? If you delight in the picturesque, then the sycamore, the 

 black-jack, the honey-locust, and the Osage orange (Madura), will serve 

 you well. Go not to China for its ill-scented ailanthus, nor to Japan for 

 its paper-mulberry, nor to Lombardy for its poplars— trees of rapid 

 growth, indeed, but destitute of any other recommendation. 



Fortunate, then, is that proprietor, who, when he first entered the 

 wilderness, with prudent forethought, left inviolate, here and there in 

 clusters, the vigor of the forest, around the selected site of his dwelling, 

 and yonder, just behind it, set bounds to that lovely park, with shaded 

 walks and avenues, fanned by the summer breezes, vocal with birds by 

 day, and loquacious insects by night. 



OUR CLIMATIC VICISSITUDES. 



The weather, that inexhaustible topic of conversation, has, thus far, 

 marked "the year of grace," 1856, by a degree of temperature lower 

 than ever before recorded in this part of the world. Science, which 

 predicts eclipses for all future time, with an accuracy so unerring that 

 even the fraction of a second is noticed ; which tells us when all the 

 changes of "the inconstant moon " will occur; and which can with 

 ease the rolling " tides presage," is as mute as dull-eyed ignorance 



