124 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



creation, were the trees " bearing fruit after their kind, pleasant 

 to the sight and good for food," brought forth. Thus occupying 

 so important a place in the preparation of man's abode, they 

 have exerted a mighty influence through all his history upon 

 his character and life. To trees in their countless forms and 

 variations, their natural and artificial groupings and combina- 

 tions, more than to all other of nature's external forms, is man 

 indebted for the development of that higher type of character 

 and culture, those noble qualities of mind and heart which con- 

 stitute his crowning glory. The first objects to meet his eyes, 

 as in some sylvan retreat, he awoke to an immortal life, they 

 have been his instructor and model, his protection and guide, 

 his unfailing support through all his wanderings. Ever above 

 and about him, they have been his constant suggester of those 

 rudimental principles of architectural science, by which he has 

 erected in every age, those magnificent structures of taste and 

 art. As he has moved among these noblest forms of vegetable 

 life, awed by their grandeur, enchanted by their beauty ; his 

 thoughts have been raised above their aspiring tops, and while 

 contemplating their visible forms, his heart has yearned for a 

 more intimate knowledge of their Author. Intimately associated 

 with the earliest recollections of childhood, gratefully remem- 

 bered among the sports and pastimes of our juvenile years, 

 closely identified with every experience of subsequent life — with 

 its joys, its sorrows, its blessings — they have become woven into 

 the web of our being. They enter into all our ideas of beauty, 

 taste and comfort. No feature of nature is so unattractive as 

 its sandy beaches, its barren plains. No solitary wilderness has 

 half the terror and gloom of those frightful deserts of burning 

 sands and suffocating winds which devour, as the breath of a fur- 

 nace, every living thing. No isolated dwelling, however grand 

 and imposing its architectural proportions, but standing like 

 our New England ch.nrches of the olden time, upon some naked 

 mound, far away from tree, or copse, or grove — cold, cheerless 

 and repulsive, is to be mentioned for its beauty, taste or attrac- 

 tiveness in comparison with the neat, cosy, though unostentatious 

 home, embosomed within lines and curves and groups of ever- 

 green trees, of flowering shrubs, of fruitful orchards, of twining 

 woodbine and trellised honeysuckle ; vicing with each other in 

 the work of adornment ; where the welcome songsters of the 



