SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 109 



Choice of Trees and Shrubs for Cities and Rural 

 Towns. 



[New York Avicrican Agriculturist, 7:114; Apr., 1848] 



[February 15, 1848] 



I was highly interested with the articles upon this sub- 

 ject, which appeared in your last volume ;^ and the beau- 

 tiful illustrations accompanying them, conveyed more in- 

 formation to my mind than ten times the same amount of 

 letter print. The present style of illustrating descrip- 

 tions by pictures, is one of the great and good improve- 

 ments of this improving age. But I beg this writer to 

 bear in mind that in many of the rural towns of America, 

 I might say nearly all of them, the building lots are laid 

 out upon such a pinch-gut principle, there is so little room 

 to spare, that fruit trees should always be looked to first. 

 In fact, we often see some useless shade tree occupying a 

 space that might have been occupied by an apple tree that 

 would have furnished not only the luxury of good fruit, 

 but the same amount of shade ; and according to my no- 

 tions of utility, more ornamental than that "great, strong, 

 ugly thing, the Lombardy poplar," which affords neither 

 food nor good fuel, and dead or alive, has no utility, (a) 

 I cannot therefore, join in the recommendation of this 

 tree, while our native forests afford so many others of 

 equal beauty of form, and far more cleanly in their hab- 

 its. If a tall spire-like tree is required to break the mo- 

 notony of the line, there is the larch, the fir, or even the 

 white birch, all better trees than that filthy worm breeder, 

 the Lombardy poplar, (b)^ 



'See American Agriculturist, 6:215, 247, 272, 303, 335. 



^ The editor's comments follow: "(a) Our correspondent probably 

 is not aware of the fact that this tree, in some parts of the country, 

 is headed down to the lowermost limbs; and that a crop of excellent 

 oven wood is obtained from the young shoots, which are cut and 

 made into faggots in the spring of every second or third year. The 

 timber of the trunk, too, when sufficiently large and sound, has 

 been wrought into articles of household furniture of most exquisite 



