DECAY OF THE PEACH TREE. 



and hokUiig their foliage through all the season like nativc-ljorn Americans, ■when 

 foreigners shrivel and die ; and jet we could name a dozen nurseries where there is a 

 large collection of ornamental trees of foi-eign growth, hut neither a sassafras, nor a 

 pepperidge, nor perhaps a tulip tree could be had for love or money. 



There is a large spirit of inquiry and a lively interest in rural taste, awakened on 

 every side of us, at the present time, from Maine to the valley of the Mississippi — 

 but the great mistake made by most novices is that they stndj garde7is too much, and 

 nature too little. Now gardens, in general, are stiff and graceless, except just so far 

 as nature, ever free and flowing, re-asserts her rights, in spite of man's want of taste, 

 or helps him when he has endeavored to work in her own spirit. But the fields and 

 woods are full of instruction, and in such features of our richest and most smiling 

 and diversified country must the best hints for the embellishment of rural homes al- 

 ways be derived. And yet it is not any portion of the woods and fields that we wish 

 our finest pleasure-ground scenery precisely to resemble. We rather wish to select 

 from the finest sylvan features of nature, and to recompose the materials in a choicer 

 manner — by rejecting anything foreign to the spirit of elegance and refinement which 

 should characterize the landscape of the most tasteful country residence — a landscape 

 in which all that is graceful and beautiful in nature is preserved — all her most per- 

 fect forms and most harmonious lines — but with that added refinement which high keep- 

 ing and continual care, confer on natural beauty without impairing its innate spirit 

 of freedom, or the truth and freshness of its intrinsic character. A planted elm of 

 fifty years, which stands in the midst of the smooth lawn before yonder mansion — its 

 long graceful branches towering upwards like an antique classical vase, and then 

 sweeping to the ground with a curve as beautiful as the falling spray of a fountain, 

 has all the freedom of character of its best prototypes in the wild woods, with a 

 refinement and a perfection of symmetry which it would be next to impossible to find 

 in a wild tree. Let us take it then as the type of all true art in landscape garden- 

 ing — which selects from natural materials that abound in any country, its best sylvan 

 features, and by giving them a better opportunity than they could otherwise obtain, 

 brings about a higher beauty of development and a more perfect expression than na- 

 ture itself offers. Study landscape in nature more, and the gardens and their cata- 

 logues less, — is our advice to the rising generation of planters, who wish to embellish 

 their places in the best and purest taste. 



PREMATURE DECAY OF THE PEACH TREE. 



BY J. P. KIRTLAND, CLEVELAND, O. 



Fifty years since the peach tree grew vigorously, and almost spontaneously, in many 

 sections of New-England, where the soil and climate were congenial. In more recent 

 times, it has flourished with equal vigorin many parts of the western country, particular- 

 ly the state of Ohio. 



has required no special powers of observation to discover that it has been gradually 

 its healthfulness — till at length it canuot be cultivated without extra care. The 



