JOUMAL OF RURAL ART Ai\^D RURAL TASTE. 



If^OWN with the Ailanthus !" is the cry we hear on all sides, town and country, 

 ^ — now that this " tree of heaven," (as the catalogues used alluringly to call 

 it ,) has penetrated all parts of the union, and begins to show its true character. 

 Down with the Ailanthus I " Its blossoms smell so disagreeably that my family are 

 made ill by it," says an old resident on one of the squares in New- York, where it is 

 the only shade for fifty contiguous houses. " We must positively go to Newport, papa, 

 to escape these horrible Ailanthuses," exclaim numberless young ladies, who find that 

 even their best Jean Maria Farina, affords no permanent relief, since their front 

 parlors have become so celestially embowered. " The vile tree comes up all over 

 my garden," say fifty owners of suburban lots who have foolishly been tempted into 

 bordering the outside of their " yards" with it — having been told that it grows 

 so " surprising fast." " It has ruined my lawn for fifty feet all round each tree," 

 say the country gentlemen, who, seduced by the oriental beauty of its foliage, have 

 also been busy for years dotting it in open places, here and there, in their pleasure 

 grounds. In some of the cities southward, the authorities, taking the matter more 

 seriously, have voted the entire downfall of the whole species, and the Herods who 

 wield the besom of sylvan destruction, have probably made a clean sweep of the first-born 

 of celestials, in more towns than one south of Mason and Dixon's line, this season. 



Although we think there is picturesqueness in the free and luxuriant foliage of the 

 Ailanthus, we shall see its downfall without a word to save it. We look upon it as 

 an usurper in rather bad odor at home, which has come over to this land of liberty, 

 under the garb of utility* to make foul the air, with its pestilent breath, and devour 

 the soil, with its intermeddling roots — a tree that has the fair outside and the treacher- 

 ous heart of the Asiatics, and that has played us so many tricks, that we find we 



* The Ailanthus ihough originally from China, was first introduced into this country from Europe, as the 

 Suniuc"— bul the mistake was soon discovered, and its rapid growth made it a favorite with planters. 



Aug. 1, 1852. 



Ko. VIII. 



