THE ACACIA. 299 



In some sheltered spot it may ornament a garden, but it 

 is by no means qualified to adorn a country. Its wood is 

 of so brittle a texture, especially when it is incumbered 

 with a weight of foliage, that you can never depend upon 

 its aid in filling up the part you wish. The branch you 

 admire to-day may be demolished to-morrow. The mis- 

 fortune is, the Acacia is not one of those grand objects, 

 like the Oak, whose dignity is often increased by ruin. 

 It depends on its beauty rather than on its grandeur, 

 which is a quality more liable to injury. 



The Acacia grows with great rapidity when young ; 

 seedlings often attain a height of from twenty to forty 

 feet in ten years, and established young plants produce 

 shoots eight or ten feet long in one season. But when it 

 has reached a height of about forty or fifty feet, it 

 grows very slowly, and never acquires the dimensions of 

 a timber-tree. Loudon, who gives a long and elaborate 

 account of the Acacia, attributes this peculiarity to the 

 fact, that its principal roots extend themselves close to the 

 surface of the ground, where the soil is always richest. 

 Hence the growth is at first very rapid ; but when the 

 roots cease to extend, all the surface soil which they tra- 

 verse being exhausted, the growth of the tree is retarded. 

 But though it alters little in size after it has reached its 

 fiftieth or sixtieth year, it is long-lived. The first tree 

 that was introduced into Europe by Monsieur Eobin, and 

 planted in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, in 1635, is still 

 in existence, and is now seventy-five feet high. About 

 the year 1815 it showed symptoms of decay, but the 

 branches being lopped, the trunk has shot out with re- 

 doubled vigour. This is, in all probability, the oldest 

 American tree in the eastern hemisphere. 



The wood of the Acacia is supposed to unite the qualities 

 of strength and durability to a degree unknown in any 

 other kind of timber : in consequence of which it has for 

 many years been employed throughout America and Europe 

 in the construction oi the wooden pins, called trenails 



