114 Ornamental Planting. 



450. In fact, there is nothing that will so effectually promote a 

 taste for sylviculture, and a familiarity with the methods of For- 

 estry, as the adornment of homesteads and villages by ornamental 

 planting. The pleasures to be derived from this employment have 

 been described by Addison, in the simplicity and elegance that char- 

 acterize his style, in one of the numbers 1 of the Spectator: 



451 . " There is, indeed, something truly magnificent in this kind of 

 amusement. It gives a nobler air to several parts of nature ; it 

 fills the earth with a variety of beautiful scenes, and has something 

 in it like creation. For this reason, the pleasure of one who plants 

 is something like that of a poet, who, as Aristotle observes, is more 

 delighted with his productions than any other writer or artist what- 

 soever. Plantations have one advantage in them which is not to be 

 found in most other works, as they give a pleasure of a more lasting 

 date, and continually improve in the eye of the planter. When 

 you have finished a building, or any other undertaking of the like 

 nature, it immediately begins to decay on your hands ; you see it 

 brought to its utmost point of perfection, and from that time hast- 

 ening to its ruin. On the contrary, when you have finished your 

 plantations, they are still arriving at greater degrees of perfection, 

 as -long as you live, and appear more delightful in each succeeding 

 year than they did in the foregoing." 



452. To realize how much the imagery of the poets and of beauty 

 in landscape painting depends upon sylvan scenery and rural asso- 

 ciations, we need but imagine how blank and dreary would poetry 

 and painting be without them. Whatever tends to cultivate and 

 extend this appreciation of the beautiful in nature is in direct ad- 

 vancement of Forestry. In this the taste and good sense of one, 

 may become an example for another, as in every phase of life, and 

 in every pursuit of business or of pleasure. Mankind are largely 

 influenced by the example of others, and can often assign no better 

 reason for this imitation than that it is the practice of neighbors. 



453. It has sometimes been a custom to plant a tree to commem- 

 orate an event the birth of a child ; the visit of an illustrious 

 guest ; the graduation of a college class, and other occasions, which 

 give a lasting interest to the act. It occasionally happens that some 

 historical incident becomes associated with a tree, as the Royal Oak 



1 No. 583. 



