SHADE TREES IN CITIES. 



The planting intelligence must therefore increase if we would fill our grounds and 

 shade our streets with really valuable, ornamental trees. The nurserymen wUl na- 

 turally raise what is in demand, and if but ten customers ofiFer in five years for the 

 Overcup Oak, while fifty come, of a day, for the Ailanthus — the latter will be cultiva- 

 ted as a matter of course. 



The question immediately arises, what shall we use instead of the condemned trees? 

 What especially shall we use in the streets of cities ! Many — nay the majority of 

 shade trees — clean and beautiful in the country — are so infested with worms and in- 

 sects in towns as to be worse than useless. The Sycamore has failed, the Linden is 

 devoured, the Elm is preyed upon by insects. We have rushed into the arms of the 

 Tartar, partly out of fright, to escape the armies of caterpillars and cankerworms that 

 have taken possession of better trees ! 



Take refuge, friends, in the American Maples. Clean, sweet, cool, and umbrage- 

 ous, are the Maples ; and, much vaunted as Ailanthuses and Poplars are, for their 

 lightning growth, take our word for it that it is only a good go off" at the start. A 

 Maple at twenty years — or even at ten, if the soil is favorable, will be much the finer 

 and larger tree. No tree transplants more readily — none adapts itself more easily to 

 the soil, than the Maple. For light soils, and the milder parts of the Union, say the 

 middle and western states, the Silver Maple, with drooping branches, is at once the 

 best and the most graceful of street trees. For the north and east, the Soft Maple 

 and the Sugar Maple. If any one wishes to know the glory and beauty of the Sugar 

 Maple as a street tree, let him make a pilgrimage to Stockbridge, in Massachusetts ! 

 If he desires to study the Silver Maple, there is no better school than Burlington, N. 

 J. These are two towns almost wholly planted with these American trees — the syl- 

 van adornings of wihch any " native" may well be proud. The inhabitants neither 

 have to abandon their front rooms from " the smell," nor lose the use of their back 

 yards by " the suckers." And whoever plants either of these three maples, may feel 

 sure that hetis earning the thanks instead of the reproaches of posterity. 



The most beautiful and stately of all trees for an avenue — snd especially for an ave- 

 nue street in town — is an American tree that one rarely sees planted in America* — 

 never, that we remember, in any public street. We mean the Tulip Tree, or Lirio- 

 dendron. What can be more beautiful than its trunk — finely proportioned, and smooth 

 as as Grecian column ? What more artistic than its leaf, cut like an arabesque in a 

 Moorish palace — what more clean and lustrous than its tufts of foliage — dark green, 

 and rich as deepest emerald ? What more lily-like and specious than its blossoms — 

 golden and bronze shaded? and what fairer and more queenly than its whole 

 figure, stately and regal as that of Zenobia? For a park tree, to spread on every- 

 side, it is unrivalled, growing a hundred and thirty feet high, and spreading into 

 the finest symmetry of outline. t For a street tree, its columnar stem, beautiful 

 either with or without branches — with a low head or a high head — foliage over 



* Though there are grand avenues of it in the royal parks of Germany — raised from American seeds, 

 t At Wakefield— the fine countrj' seal of the Fisher family, near Philadelphia, are several tulip trees on the lawn, 

 over 100 feet high, and tliree to six feet ui diameter. 



