STATE HOETICULTUaAL SOCIETT. 169 



■with authority concerning many of our native trees as regards their 

 adaptation to this locality, but of some I feel no hesitation in report- 

 unqualifiedly in their favor. 



There can be no doubt abut the elm, the linden, the white ash, the 

 hackberry or the box elder, all valuable trees and well adapted to 

 street planting. I should also place the sugar maple in the front 

 rank, but I hear on all sides complaints of its slow growth, in reply 

 to which I can point to an avenue of sugar maples now averaging 

 two feet through and furnishing a continuous shade, which I planted 

 after I was thirty years old, on the day of President Polk's inaugura- 

 tion, at what was then my home on the Delaware river, and I am 

 still planting trees and urging others to go and do likewise. 



My friend, Mr, C. M. Loring, president of our park commission, 

 and one, as you all know, whose taste and knowledge give great 

 weight to his opinion, is a great advocate of the silver, or soft maple, 

 which indeed is a beautiful tree when in perfection, but its liability 

 to be attacked by insects and to be broken by storms, are to my mind 

 insuperable objections. The birches are certainly among the finest of 

 our ornamental trees, and I wonder that they are not in more fre- 

 quent use. The yellow birch and the canoe birch are superb trees, 

 and the cut-leaved weeping birch has, I think, no rival in its peculiar 

 style of delicate grace and beauty 



I am very confident that the catalpa speciosa will prove hardy here, 

 and I have my belief on the fact that not one of a great number 

 planted three years ago on our Central Park, showed the least sign of 

 injury from the extraordinarily severe weather of last winter. Its 

 rapid growth and the great durability of its timber make it exceed- 

 ingly desirable for extensive planting. I have here some samples in 

 evidence, which you may be interested to examine. They were sent 

 me by Mr. E. E. Barney, the well known manufacturer of cars at 

 Dayton, Ohio, who uses the timber very extensively in his business, 

 and urged its extensive cultivation. You will see by these samples 

 that it is a beautiful wood, susceptible of a fine polish, and the fact 

 that one of these pieces is from a post that had been in the ground 

 forty-seven years, and another seventy, shows that it is practically 

 indestructible. Unfortunately, the wood is not hard enough to resist 

 the wear and tear of railroad travel, and refuses to hold the spikes 

 when used for railroad ties. 



NATIVE OE FOREIGN TREES. 



The general statement may be advanced with certainty that our 



