ON PLANTING SHADE TREES. 



203 



this excellent work of adorning the country 

 at large, let them form a society and make 

 proselytes of those who are slow to be 

 moved otherwise. A public spirited man 

 in Boston does a great service to the commu- 

 ity, and earns the thanks of his country- 

 men, by giving fifty thousand dollars to 

 endow a professorship in a college ; let the 

 public spirited man of the more humble vil- 

 lage in the interior, also establish his claim 

 to public gratitude, by planting fifty trees 

 annually, along its public streets, in quar- 

 ters where there is the least ability or the 

 least taste to be awakened in this way, or 

 where the poverty of the houses most needs 

 something to hide them, and give an aspect 

 of shelter and beauty. Hundreds of public 

 meetings are called, on subjects not half so 

 important to the welfare of the place as 

 this, whose object would be to direct the 

 attention of all the householders to the na- 

 kedness of their estates, in the eyes of 

 those who most love our country, and would 

 see her rural towns and village homes made 

 as attractive and pleasant as they are free 

 and prosperous. 



We pointed out, in a former article, the 

 principle that should guide those who are 

 about to select trees for streets of rural towns 

 — that of choosing that tree which the soil of 



the place will bring to the highest perfection. 

 There are two trees, however, which are so 

 eminently adapted to this purpose in the 

 northern states, that they may be univer- 

 sally employed. These are the American 

 Weeping Elm and the Silver Maple. They 

 have, to recommend them, in the first place, 

 great rapidity of growth ; in the second 

 place, the graceful forms which they as- 

 sume ; in the third place, abundance of 

 fine foliage ; and lastly, the capacity of 

 adapting themselves to almost every soil 

 where trees will thrive at all. 



These two trees have broad and spread- 

 ing heads, fit for wide streets and avenues. 

 That fine tree, the Dutch Elm, of exceed- 

 ingly rapid growth and thick dark-green 

 foliage, makes a narrower and more upright 

 head than our native sort, and, as well as 

 the Sugar Maple may be planted in streets 

 and avenues, where there is but little room 

 for the expansion of wide spreading tops. 



No town, where any of these trees are 

 extensively planted, can be otherwise than 

 agreeable to the eye, whatever may be its 

 situation, or the style of its dwellings. To 

 villages prettily built, they will give a cha- 

 racter of positive beauty that will both add 

 tvO the value of property, and increase the 

 comfort and patriotism of the inhabitants. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SEVERE FROSTS ON TREES. 



BY E. NICHOLS, WALHONDING, OHIO. 



Sir — In volume 2, page 74, is the opinion 

 of M. MoRREN, and your comments dis- 

 senting from his aphorisms on this subject. 

 He contends the injury thus done to trees 

 is chemical ; you suggest it is often mechani- 

 cal, bursting the sap-vessels, etc. As to the 

 form or mode of chemical action, by elimi- 

 nation of the air on thawing, as maintained 



by M. MoRREN, I give no opinion ; but that 

 the inj ury is chemical and not mechanical, in 

 a majority of cases, seems to me highly 

 probable. Your principal fact, the cold 

 rending the entire trunks of trees with a loud 

 noise, seems to me rather against than for 

 your position, for this rending does not even 

 injure the health of the tree; on the con- 



