STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 51 



TREES AND THEIR USES IN RURAL EMBELLISHMENT. 

 By Samuel L. Boakdman. 



Men and trees have always been inseparable companions. In the 

 beginning God planted a garden over to the eastward in Eden, 

 where, it may be supposed, it was so planned to command the first 

 rays of the rising sun, and out of the ground of that garden He 

 made to grow every tree that was pleasant to the sight and good for 

 food. It would be foolish and presumptuous to say tl^at man could 

 not exist without trees, because were there no such objects in 

 existence the Infinite Benevolence would supply his wants through 

 some other medium. But constituted as man is, and established as 

 trees and their functions and properties are, it is plain that the 

 present exquisite order and harmony of things in regard to man's 

 welfare, are most intimately and inseparably identified with trees. 

 Thus when we would consider man and his privileges, the amenities 

 and enjoyments that encircle life, the comforts and ornaments of his 

 home, we cannot possibly do so, if we would give all things their 

 fair place, without keeping trees also constantly in mind ; and hence 

 from the time when those trees pleasant to the sight were set in the 

 ground over to the eastward in that first garden, down to the newest 

 countr}" home with its finely painted clapboards and row of street 

 maples planted but yesterday, have trees given picturesqueness to 

 the landscape, surrounded man's home with beauty, and been to him 

 everywhere objects of attention, companionship and love. In the 

 landscape trees are indispensable to that high and fine qualit}- of 

 enjoyment which we term picturesqueness. We ma}' look out upon 

 a rocky mountain and pronounce it grand and sublime, but we have 

 little sympathy with its somewhat forbidding grandeur. Infinite 

 reaches of rolling prairie, the soil fertile and covered for miles and 

 miles with rich fields of corn, may give one an idea of agricultural 

 wealth — but in the absence of trees neither view could be called 

 beautiful or picturesque. Trees clothe the mountain-side with loveli- 

 ness, they break up the outlines of view, and give variety of colors, 

 movement and shadows ; they touch the imagination with an agree- 

 able sense of fruitfulness, or, if they be timber or forest trees, with 

 the idea ot nobility and wealth. Indeed trees are to the landscape 

 what living and moving people are to the town, or to the interior of 

 a massive church or cathedral — an element that may he dispensed 



