Trees in Towns and Villages 



In some parts of Germany the government makes it a 

 duty for every landholder to plant trees in the highways 

 before his property; and in a few towns that we have heard 

 of no young bachelor can take a wife till he has planted a 

 tree. We have not a word to say against either of these 

 regulations. But Americans, it must be confessed, do not 

 like to be over-governed, or compelled into doing even beau- 

 tiful things. We therefore recommend as an example to all 

 country towns that most praiseworthy and successful mode 

 of achieving this result adopted by the citizens of North- 

 ampton, Massachusetts. 



This, as we learn, is no less than an Ornamental Tree 

 Society, an association whose business and pleasure it is to 

 turn dusty lanes and bald highways into alleys and avenues 

 of coolness and verdure. Making a "wilderness blossom 

 like the rose," is scarcely more of a miracle than may be 

 wrought by this simple means. It is quite incredible how 

 much spirit such a society, composed at first of a few really 

 zealous arboriculturists, may beget in a country neighbor- 

 hood. Some men there are in every such place who are too 

 much occupied with what they consider more important 

 matters ever to plant a single tree unsolicited. But these 

 are readily acted upon by a society which works for the 

 public good and which moves an individual of this kind 

 much as a town meeting moves him, by the greater weight 

 of numbers. Others there are who can only be led into 

 tasteful improvement by the principle of imitation, and 

 who consequently will not begin to plant trees till it is the 

 fashion to do so. And again others who grudge the trifling 

 cost of putting out a shade tree, but who will be shamed 

 into it by the example of every neighbor around them - 

 neighbors who have been stimulated into action by the 

 zeal of the society. And last of all, as we have learned, 

 there is here and there an instance of some slovenly and 

 dogged farmer who positively refuses to take the trouble to 

 plant a single twig by the roadside. Such an individual 

 the society commiserate and beg him to let them plant the 

 trees in front of his estate at their own cost. 



