FOREST TREES. 187 



But from some cause, which perhaps it would be diffi- 

 cult to explain, one subject of botany has hitherto been 

 almost wholly neglected, both by teachers and the ama- 

 teurs of science. 



American forest trees, which foreigners inform us, con- 

 stitute the grandest department of the vegetable king- 

 dom, have been doomed to a strange and unwarranted 

 neglect, unless indeed it is to sweep them by an almost 

 sacrilegious hand, with all their richness and majestic 

 grandeur from the earth, which groans under their 

 weight. The towering oak, which all ages, and even 

 barbarians have acknowledged to be the monarch of 

 their forests, capable of enduring the buffeting tempests 

 of a thousand winters, has been less studied and is less 

 understood by the lovers of science, especially in our own 

 country, than the rarest, humblest, and most useless 

 plant, which some barren knoll supports for a few days 

 or weeks, with a frail and meagre form, but suffers it to 

 wither, die, and disappear by the force of the genial rays 

 of the sun for half a season. 



Why our own majestic forests should be thus neglected 

 and abused, while the less stately groves of other nations 

 and other ages have been subjects of general interest, 

 and sometimes of adoration, we shall not undertake to 

 explain. But such is the fact. 



It does not speak well for the science, the taste, or the 

 good sense of Americans, that the best, and almost 

 only description of their forest trees which has come to 

 the public, is from the hands of Europeans. Two gen- 

 tlemen from France, by the name of Michaux, first the 

 father and afterwards the son, crossed the Atlantic for 

 the express purpose of examining our forests, which they 

 ranged from Canada to Mexico. They not only exa- 

 mined our trees with the eyes of botanists, and under the 

 enthusiasm of the lovers of science, but as men of busi- 

 ness and common sense, they visited ship-yards, work- 

 shops, and other places where they would be likely lo learn 

 by observation and from inquiries of tliose who worked 

 or used the timber they furnish, what are their properties 

 and uses. 



The fruits of the science and researches of these two 



