VARIETY OF TREES IN AMERICA. oan 
above forty or fifty native trees of such economical value as 
to be worth the special care of the forester, while the oak alone 
numbers more than thirty species in the United States,* and 
some other North American genera are almost equally diversi- 
fied.+ 
* For full catalogues of American forest-trees, and remarks on their geo- 
graphical distribution, consult papers on the subject by Dr. J. G. Cooper, in 
the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1858, and the Report of the 
United States Patent Office, Agricultural Division, for 1860. 
+ Although Spenser’s catalogue of trees occurs in the first canto of the first 
book of the ‘‘ Faéry Queene ”—the only canto of that exquisite poem actually 
read by most students of English literature—it is not so generally familiar as 
to make the quotation of it altogether superfluous: 
AYALA Ee 
Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand, 
A shadie grove not farr away they spide, 
That promist ayde the tempest to withstand ; 
Whose loftie trees, yclad with sommers pride, 
Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide, 
Not perceable with power of any starr: 
And all within were pathes and alleies wide, 
With footing worne, and leading inward farr ; 
Faire harbour that them seems; so in they entered ar. 
Hraieacnce 
And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, 
Joying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, 
Which therein shrouded from the tempest dred, 
Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. 
Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, 
The sayling pine; the cedar stout and tall; 
The vine-propp elm ; the poplar never dry ; 
The bnilder oake, sole king of forrests all ; 
The aspine good for staves; the cypresse funerall ; 
EX. 
The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours 
And poets sage; the firre that weepeth still; 
The willow, worne of forlorn paramours ; 
The eugh, obedient to the benders will 5 
The birch for shaftes; the sallow for the mill; 
The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound $ 
The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill; 
The fruitfull olive; and the platane round 5 
The carver holme; the maple seeldom inward sound. 
Although the number of species of American forest-trees is much larger 
than of European, yet the distinguishable variectics are relatively more numer- 
