CHARACTERISTICS OF TREES. 287 



lumpish globular types which are commonly admired. But there 

 are trees which lose, or never have, symmetry of form, and, like 

 some of our other acquaintances, are interesting for their oddi- 

 ties. Look, for instance, at the accompanying cut of the strag- 

 gling elm, which is a portrait from nature, and the portrait of 

 Parson's weeping beech, on page 328. The latter is a luxuriant 

 mass of pendant branches and foliage, erratic in all directions, and 

 yet one of the most interesting of young trees. It is bizarre, 

 like the expressions of a wit. Its unlikeness to other trees is 

 its superiority ; but the exuberant vigor that clothes it with such 

 masses of glossy foliage, adds to picturesqueness the constant 

 loveableness of beautiful health. Of the trees which by nature 

 grow irregularly, the native larch, or hacmatack, is a familiar ex- 

 ample, its head generally shooting off to one side after it attains a 

 certain height. The osage orange is so rambling that it suggests 

 a comparison with those eccentric geniuses who, having decided 

 talents in many different directions, attempt to follow them all, and 

 whose successes or failures are equally interesting to observers. 

 Many specimens of the weeping elm, while young, like the wild 

 and not unusual form shown by Fig. 76, are 

 fine examples of erratic luxuriance, but they 

 usually fill up, with age, and finally become 

 models of symmetry. Trees are often made 

 picturesque by accidents, as the breaking of 

 trunks or important branches by summer tor- 

 nados, or the falling of other trees upon them. 

 Fig. 78 is an example from nature of a white 

 oak upwards of three feet in diameter, which, 

 when young, was bent by the fall of some great tree that rested 

 upon it, until all the fibres of its wood had conformed to the forced 

 position. Fig. 79 is another sketch from nature of an oak that 

 has been robbed of a part of its main trunk, and is picturesque 

 in consequence of it. Advantage should always be taken of the 

 striking effect of such trees by placing gate-ways or conducting 

 walks under them, if practicable ; or, if not, then to make them 

 parts of groups in such a way that their picturesqueness may be 

 brought into high relief. 



