280 



A C O MP A li I S O y OF THE 



Fig. 57. 



make an elm look like an oak, but rather brings into higher relief 

 the distinguishing marks of each, making the elm more graceful, 

 and the oak more majestic. Yet uncommon thriftiness changes 

 the forms of some trees so much that specimens growing in the 

 shade of the forest, stinted by want of sunlight, and crowded by 

 roots of rival trees, are tall, lank, and straggling in limb, w'ith scanty 

 foliage ; while the same species grown in rich open ground becomes 

 glorious with its breadth and weighty masses of foliaged boughs. 

 Who would know the common chestnut in the forest by its form, as 

 the same tree that spreads its arms in the open field willi all the 

 majesty of the oak? Or the "mast-timber" branchless white pine 

 of a Maine forest as the same tree that forms in open ground a 

 broad-based pyramid of evergreen foliage, and broods with its \ast 

 branches like a broad-winged bird upon a meadow-nest ? 'i'iie crooked 

 sassafras of the woods, Fig. 57, running up as if 

 uncertain what point in the heavens to aim at, 

 and at what height to put out its arms, seems as 

 unhappy there as a cultured citizen forced to 

 spend his life among the Camanches. But the 

 same tree, in rich soil in the open sun, expands 

 naturally, as in Fig. 58, into one of the most 

 beautiful heads of foliage among small trees. 

 Few trees attain a full measure of thrift that are 

 not fully exposed east, south, and west to the sun. We do not 

 mean to assert that trees will not be beautiful without such com- 

 plete exposure, but that, to realize the highest 

 beauty of which any one specimen is capable, it 

 must be so exposed. A greater variety of beauty 

 is obtained from a group made up of more than 

 one species of tree, thus contrasting several sorts 

 of foliage and form, than from a single tree which 

 might have grown to cover the same space ; and 

 we therefore sacrifice the highest type of indi- 

 vidual perfection to produce more striking effects with several 

 trees. But the same fact must be observed with reference to the 

 group ; — its full beauty can only be realized by having the trees 

 in luxuriant growth ; and open, collectively, on all sides to the sun. 



Fig. 58. 



