THE BUTTONWOOD TREE DISEASE. 



■where the common school and ballot-box leave it, and raises up the working-man to the 

 same level of enjoyment with the man of leisure and accomplishment. The higher social 

 and artistic elements of every man's nature lie dormant within him, and every laborer 

 is a possible gentleman, not by the possession of money or fine clothes — but through 

 the refining influence of intellectual and moral culture. Open wide, therefore, the 

 doors of your libraries and picture galleries, all ye true republicans ! Build halls 

 where knowledge shall be freely diffused among men, and not shut up within the narrow 

 walls of narrower institutions. Plant spacious parks in your cities, and unloose their 

 gates as wide as the gates of morning to the whole people. As there are no dark places 

 at noon day, so education and culture — the true sunshine of the soul — will banish the 

 plague-spots of democracy ; and the dread of the ignorant exclusive who has no faith in 

 the refinement of a republic, will stand abashed in the next century, before a whole 

 people whose system of voluntary education embraces (combined with perfect individ- 

 ual freedom) not only common schools of rudimentary knowledge, but common enjoy- 

 ments for all classes, in the higher realms of art, letters, science, social recreations 

 and enjoyments. Were our legislators but wise enough to understand, to-day, the 

 destinies of the New "World, the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney, made universal, 

 would be not half so much a miracle fifty years hence in America, as the idea of a 

 whole nation of laboring-men reading and writing, was, in his day, in England. 



THE BUTTONWOOD TREE DISEASE. 



BY A. BAYLIES, TAUNTON, AIASS. 



Dear Sir — " A Constant Reader" in the July No., inquires for a little light on the sub- 

 ject of the Buttonwood disease. lie shall have that light, alhough he may consider it by 

 far, smaller than a rush-light. 



I have long been acquainted with the Buttonwood, and it was with me a favorite tree. 

 I never saw a diseased one in Massachusetts, before May 21st, 1842, and I never have seen 

 a healthy one in Massachusetts since that time. Now for a solution of this mystery, if 

 mystery it may be called. ^lay 20th, 1842, we had a very cold, i-ainy day, with much 

 sloet, with the wind at north-east and north, which lasted nearly all day, and at sunset 

 the wind hauled round to the north-west, with a clear sky, and at 9 o'clock in the evening 

 it was very cold, with the numerous stars shining and twinkling as we often see them in 

 December. This state of the weather lasted through the night, and the morning presented 

 appearances which I shall never forget — the earth was frozen hard enough to bear up a 

 man, and the ice was as thick as window glass, and sad to relate, but the truth must come 

 out, every leaf and Buttonwood bud through the length and breadth of Massachusetts 

 was "as dead as a herring." Now what could the poor Buttonwood tree do in this di- 

 lemma? Its leaves and its buds were all gone, but it had life and sap enough to form ano- 

 ther crop as large as the first, but how to begin this process was .the question. Nature 

 is never idle, and perhaps she was not altogether prepared for this contingency, and so I 

 should infer from her tardiness in repairing the injury of the 21st of May. 



But finally, about the first of July following, young shoots and leaves began to appear 



