SHADE TREES IN CITIES. 



have caught a Tartar which it requires something more than a Chinese wall to con 

 fine within limits. 



Down with the Ailanthus ! therefore, we cry with the populace. But we have rea- 

 sons beside theirs, and now that the favorite has fallen out of favor with the sovereigns, 

 we may take the opportunity to preach a funeral sermon over its remains that shall 

 not, like so many funeral sermons, be a bath of oblivion-waters to wash out all memo- 

 ry of its vices. For if the Tartar is not laid violent hands upon, and kept under close 

 watch, even after the spirit has gone out of the old trunk, and the coroner is satisfied 

 that he has come to a violent end — lo, we shall have him upon us tenfold in the shape 

 of suckers innumerable — little Tartars that will beget a new dynasty, and overrun 

 our grounds and gardens again, without mercy. 



The vices of the Ailanthus — the incurable vices of the by-gone favorite — then, are 

 two-fold. In the first place it smells horribly ^ both in leaf and flower — and instead of 

 sweetening and purifying the air, fills it with a heavy, sickening odor ;* in the second 

 place it Slickers abominably, and thereby over runs, appropriates and reduces to beg- 

 gary, all the soil of every open piece of ground where it is planted. These are the 

 mortifications which every body feels sooner or later, who has been seduced by the 

 luxuriant outstretched welcome of its smooth round arms, and the waving and beckoning 

 of its graceful plumes, into giving it a place in their home circle. For a few years, 

 while the tree is growing, it has, to be sure, a fair and specious look. You feel al- 

 most, as you look at its round trunk shooting up as straight, and almost as fast as a rock- 

 et, crowned by such a luxuriant tuft of verdure, that you have got a young palm tree be- 

 fore your door, that can whisper tales to you in the evening of that " Flowery Coun- 

 try" from whence you have borrowed it, and you swear to stand by it against all slan- 

 derous aspersions. But alas ! you are greener in your experience than the Tartar in 

 his leaves. A few years pass by ; the sapling becomes a tree — its blossoms fill the 

 air with something that looks like curry-powder, and smells like the plague. You 

 shut down the windows to keep out the unbalmy June air, if you live in town, and in- 

 vai-iably give a wide berth to the heavenly avenue, if you belong to the country. 



But we confess openly, that our crowning objection to this petted Chinaman or Tar- 

 tar, who has played us so falsely, is a patriotic objection. It is that he has drawn 

 away our attention from our own more noble native American trees, to waste it on this 

 miserable pigtail of an Indiaman. What should we think of the Italians, if they 

 should forswear their own orange trees and figs, pomegranates and citrons, and plant 

 their streets and gardens with the poison sumac tree of our swamps ? And what must 

 at an European arboriculturist think, who travels in America, delighted and astonished 

 the beauty of our varied and exhaustless forests — the richest in the temperate zone, to 

 see that we neither value nor plant them, but fill our lawns and avenues with the 

 cast oiF nuisances of the gardens of Asia and Europe. 



And while in the vein, we would include in the same category another less fashiona- 

 ble but still much petted foreigner that has settled among us with a good letter of cred- 



Two acquaintances of ours, in a house in the upper pan of New- York, are regularly driven out by the Ailanthus 

 malaria every season. 



