VAEIETY OF TEEES m AMERICA. 325 



Ev/ropea/fh cmd America/n Trees com/pared. 



The woods of North Americaa are strikingly distinguished 

 from those of Europe by the vastly greater variety of speciea 

 they contain.* According to Clave, there are in " France and 

 in most parts of Europe only about twenty forest-trees, five or 

 six of which are spike-leaved and resinous, the remainder broad- 

 leaved." t Our author, however, doubtless means genera, though 

 he uses the word especes. Rossmassler enumerates fifty-seven 

 species of forest-trees as found in Germany, but some of these 

 are mere shrubs, some are fruit and properly garden trees, and 

 some others are only varieties of familiar species. The valuable 

 manual of Parade describes about the same number, including, 

 however, two of American origin — ^the locust, Rdbinia pesuda- 

 cacia, and the "Weymouth or white pine, Pinus strdbus — and 

 the cedar of Lebanon from Asia, which, or at least a very closely 

 alhed species, is indigenous in Algeria also. We may then safely 

 say that Europe does not possess 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 !N'orth American genera 

 are almost equally diversified.! 



globulus 153 m. ^ 506' high, and of a eucalyptus amygdaXinus 386' to the lowest 

 limb, with a total height of 137 m. = 460'. 



If we may credit late reports, the growth of the eucalyptus is so rapid in 

 California, that the child is perhaps now born who will see the tallest sequoi« 

 overtopped by this new vegetable emigrant from Australia. 



* According to Schacht, Les Arbres, p. 384, woods of a single species are 

 always the product of an artificial planting, the spontaneous wood being 

 more diversified in its composition. The few remnants of natural forest which 

 still exist in the German States are composed of both evergreen conifers and 

 deciduous trees. 



\ Etudes Foresti^res, p. 7. 



t For catalogues of American forest-trees, and remarks on their geographical 

 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 " Faery Queene " — the only canto of that exquisite poem actually.- 



