332 THE AMEEICAN FOEESTS. 



I admit, though not without reluctance, that the f orest-treea 

 of Central and Southern Europe have a great advantage over our 

 own in the corresponding latitudes, in density of fohage as well 

 as in depth of color and persistence of the leaves in deciduoua 

 species. An American, who, after a long absence from the Uni- 

 ted States, returns in the full height of summer, is painfully sur- 

 prised at the thinness and poverty of the leafage even of the 

 trees which he had habitually regarded as specially umbrageous, 

 and he must wait for the autumnal frosts before he can recover 

 his partiality for the glories of his native woods. 



JJ^one of our northeastern evergreens resemble the umbrella- 

 pine sufficiently to be a fair object of comparison with it. A 

 cedar, very common above the Highlands on the Hudson, and 

 elsewhere, is extremely like the cypress, straight, slender, with 

 erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to the ground, but 

 its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree does not attain 

 the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the hthe flexibility 

 of that tree.* In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly re- 

 sembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the 

 two, especially when they are agitated by the wind ; for under 

 Buch circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the 

 most ungraceful, or — if I may apply such an expression to any- 

 thing but human affectation of movement — ^the most awJcwa/rd 

 of trees. The poplar trembles before the blast, flutters, strug- 

 gles wildly, dishevels its fohage, gropes around with its feeble 

 branches, and hisses as in impotent passion. The cypress gathers 

 its limbs still more closely to its stem, bows a gracious salute 

 rather than an humble obeisance to the tempest, bends to the 

 wind with an elasticity that assures you of its prompt return to 

 its regal attitude, and sends from its thick leaflets a murmur like 

 the roar of the far-off ocean. 



common and striking spectacle, the phosphorescence of decaying wood, until, 

 in the latter years of his life, it caught his attention in a bivouac in the forests 

 of Maine. He seems to have been more excited by this phenomenon than by 

 any other described in his works. It must be a capacious eye that takes in all 

 the visible facts in the history of the most familiar natural objects. — TTie Maim 

 Woods, p. 184. 



* The cold winter, or rather spring, of 1872 proved fatal to many C3T)resse» 

 as weU as olive trees in the Val d'Arno. The cypress, therefore, could be in- 

 troduced only into California and our Southern States. 



