244 PONDS AND LAKES. 



bank. In the midst of these groups grew some higher 

 shrubs or small trees like the birch, for the sake of empha- 

 sizing the effect and giving variety of sky-line. I do not 

 wish to be needlessly technical, but if you could see the 

 two great Lombardy poplars, forty feet high, bordering and 

 making a frame, as it were, for my place, 

 you would understand what I mean by 

 emphasis. Great towers of green, these 

 poplars seem to be mounting guard over 

 my small domain, and their long shadows 

 at sundown reach far across the stream 

 and the grass of the meadow beyond. I 

 am not going to apologize for my pop- 

 EULALIA \sx&. Th ev were and are grand, and I am 



proud of them. Tree-experts may warn 

 me that they are liable to borers and bark-lice, and that they 

 lose their leaves early in the season, and in many ways 

 invite the use of the axe. It may be so. I have enjoyed 

 them, however, for a number of years and they are entirely 

 healthy yet, although surely a score of years in age. It will 

 be a long time, therefore, before an axe under my direction 

 will touch them. Even the tendency to lose their leaves 

 early in the season would not induce me to use the axe, for 

 their lofty spire-like forms dominate everything and estab- 

 lish that variety of sky-line so much to be desired by the 

 lawn-planter. Let the limbs be bare and the trunk scarred 

 and seamed with borers, the noble outline is there, and 

 shrubs and small trees can be made to screen the lower and 

 generally uglier portions. It should be remembered also, 

 that an occasional pruning, as the years go on, tends greatly 

 to renew and perpetuate the poplar's health and vigor. 



