Trees in Towns and Villages 355 



enough, if very sparingly introduced in landscape planting, 

 is, of all others, most abominable in its serried stiffness and 

 monotony when planted in avenues or straight lines. Yet 

 nine-tenths of all the ornamental planting of that period 

 was made up of this now decrepit and condemned tree. 



So too, we recall one or two of our villages where the soil 

 would have produced any of our finest forest trees, yet 

 where the only trees thought worthy of attention by the 

 inhabitants are the ailanthus and the paper mulberry. 



The principle which would govern us if we were planting 

 the streets of rural towns is this: Select the finest indigenous 

 tree or trees, such as the soil and climate of the place will bring 

 to the highest perfection. Thus if it were a neighborhood 

 where the elm flourished peculiarly well, or the maple, or the 

 beech, we would directly adopt the tree indicated. We 

 would then, in time, succeed in producing the finest possible 

 specimens of the species selected: while, if we adopted, for 

 the sake of fashion or novelty, a foreign tree, we should 

 probably only succeed in getting poor and meagre specimens. 



It is because this principle has been, perhaps accidentally, 

 pursued, that the villages of New England are so celebrated 

 for their sylvan charms. The elm is, we think, nowhere 

 seen in more majesty, greater luxuriance, or richer beauty, 

 than in the valley of the Connecticut; and it is because the 

 soil is so truly congenial to it, that the elm-adorned streets 

 of the villages there elicit so much admiration. They are 

 not only well planted with trees, but with a kind of tree 

 which attains its greatest perfection there. Who can forget 

 the fine lines of the sugar-maple in Stockbridge, Massachu- 

 setts? They are in our eyes the rural glory of the place. 

 The soil there is their own, and they have attained a beau- 

 tiful symmetry and development. Yet if, instead of maples, 

 poplars or willows had been planted, how marked would 

 have been the difference of effect. 



There are no grander or more superb trees than our 

 American oaks. Those who know them only as they grow 

 in the midst, or on the skirts of a thick forest, have no 

 proper notion of their dignity and beauty when planted and 



