FLORA OF THE MOUNTAIN. 227 



scripts of some of these trees into ANY " Midsummer Night's 

 Dream," would scarcely have been " to have stolen the im- 

 pression of the fantasy" of Shakspeare's most ultra ima- 

 ginative creations. Surely, in the presence of one of these 

 fanciful forms, one would say, that the artist who should for- 

 get or deny that a tree can be an individual, in its contour 

 and lineaments as specific and unique as a statue of Phidias 

 or a church of Michael Angelo, had better drop his pencil, 

 or satisfy his aspirations by transcribing the stereotype trees 

 of his first lesson-book, and by the transference to his can- 

 vas of the pictures of fence-rails or timber-posts. 



With a sense of shame the forgiveness of the wood-gods 

 must be implored for having neglected so long one of their 

 special admirations, a true splendor of the vegetable world, 

 the LYRIODENDRON - TULIPIFERA, or tulip -tree, sometimes 

 also called the wild poplar. The mountain sports this 

 plant in a state of greatest perfection, its trunk attaining 

 the largest proportions by the species anywhere achieved. 

 A proud and lofty monarch of the American woods, it is 

 admired as a beauty of the earth by all who have seen it. 

 With a broad, lobed, and truncated smooth leaf giving a spe- 



American Academy of Music of Philadelphia, by Russel Smith, the 

 well-known American landscape-painter. Every limb, twig, and almost 

 every leaf, of this remarkable tree has been fixed on a canvas forty 

 feet square, by the wonderful power and genius of this gifted artist. 

 The original of this picture stands on the "everglades," or what 

 was originally the beaver-dams of one of the tributaries of Clear- 

 field Creek, three miles northwest of the "Alleghany Health Insti- 

 tute." It may not generally be known, even to Pennsylvanians, 

 that many of the finest artistic combinations in the magnificent 

 scenography of the Academy, the grandest histrionic temple in 

 the world, were taken from the recesses of the Alleghany Moun- 

 tain forests, in their native State, by the magical pencil of Russel 

 Smith, a native artist. To more intimately and thoroughly study and 

 work from the beautiful models of the mountain, Mr. Smith has 

 secured a rural cabin and piece of land near the "Alleghany 

 Springs" and Pennsylvania Railroad summit, where, in his own 

 words, "some of the brightest and grandest moments of my"life 

 have been passed." 



