DECIDUOUS TREES. 413 



which carries a sweet smile in the sun that must be observed to be 

 appreciated. It is especially radiant when the setting sun gilds 

 its top. All trees are in fact most beautiful in such a light, but 

 the crown of the sassafras is pre-eminently so. 



The tree requires a deep, warm, rich soil, and will do itself no 

 credit in any other. Woodsmen know that soil to be excellent where 

 groves of sassafras abound. In the woods it sometimes reaches an 

 altitude of fifty feet, but in open ground forty feet height and 

 breadth, and two feet diameter of trunk, is about its greatest size. 

 The annual growth after it reaches a height of ten feet is about 

 one foot a year. Its earlier growth is rapid. Cattle and hogs are 

 exceedingly fond of rubbing against the fragrant bark, and young 

 trees must be protected from possible danger from this cause 

 more carefully, and for a longer time than most trees. 



The Benzoin Laurel or Benjamin Tree. Laiirus benzoin. 

 — A deciduous shrub or tree, native of Virginia. Leaves from four 

 to six inches long, like the unlobed leaves of the sassafras. It 

 grows in an exposed location on the brow of a hill in the New 

 York Central Park, and is there ten feet high, with abundant glossy 

 foliage. It will become a tree from fifteen to twenty feet high. 

 One of the finest large shrubs in the Park. 



Loudon says of it : " In British gardens it forms rather a 

 tender peat-earth shrub, handsome from its large leaves, but seldom 

 thriving, except where the soil is kept moist, and the situation 

 sheltered." It may not be safe to recommend it for trial in the 

 northern States to any but very careful cultivators, notwithstanding 

 its success in the Central Park. 



THE PAULOWNIA. Fmdowiiia imperialis. 



A Japanese tree introduced into France in 1837, and into this 

 country about ten years later. The enormous size of its leaves, 

 which sometimes measure nearly two feet in length and eighteen 

 inches in diameter, and its rank growth, occasionally making canes 

 from eight to twelve feet long in a single season, were qualities so 



