PREFACE. 



THIS book has been prepared to aid the city nature 

 lovers who frequent our beautiful Park in identifying 

 its trees and shrubs by diagrams of location and text 

 description. Its need grew out of actual experience 

 and it is hoped that its service will be direct and prac- 

 tical. 



How many there are who come to our Park to whom 

 the trees are simply trees and the shrubs, bushes. The 

 individuality of the oak, the hornbeam, or the maple 

 is lost to them in the general mass. Many of these 

 would gladly learn had they the time or opportunity 

 and to meet the needs of such and also to supplement 

 mere identification with descriptions of characteristics 

 of form, foliage, flower and fruit, has been the gov- 

 erning purpose in the general plan of preparing this 

 book. Its method is self-evident and the park rambler, 

 following the paths, soon gets to recognize the various 

 types of trees and shrubs. These grow more and 

 more distinctive and individual as their observed char- 

 acteristics become more familiar to him and he finds 

 out that when these have been once learned thorough- 

 ly, not only has he learned them for Prospect Park, 

 but for Central Park, and, in short, for the parks of 

 most cities of climatic conditions similar to ours. 



Of course, in using this book, it must be borne in 

 mind that it would be utterly impossible to locate 



