Retrospective Criticism. 93 



and to exclude others which were to him objectionable, in which he dis- 

 played very considerable taste, and with great effect. Mrs. Wingfield also, 

 in the floral department, exhibited great taste in the selection of appropriate 

 kinds of flowers for furnishing the clumps, and it was at her suggestion that 

 the arches of trellis work were placed over the straight walk in the back lawn. 

 — T.Rutger. 71. Navy Boiv, Devonport, Nov. 19. 1840. 



On the Natural Succession of Forest Trees in the United States. — In Vol. V. 

 p. 421. is a short paper of mine on this subject, and lam now enabled to 

 add another fact, in confirmation of those there stated, and from the best 

 authority. 



The Rev. Dr. Dwight, formerly President of Yale College, Connecticut, 

 says, that in Addison Count}', Vermont, the lands which have been once cul- 

 tivated, and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and 

 fine growth of hickory. Of this wood there is not a single tree in any 

 original forest within fifty, miles of the spot. The native growth here is pine, 

 of which he did not see a single stem in a whole grove of hickory. Similar 

 specimens of an entire change in the forest vegetation are common in many, 

 perhaps in all parts of New England, where the land has been cultivated, and 

 again covered with wood. — J. Af. Philadelphia, Oct. 30. 



American Button Wood, or Plane Tree (Pldtanus occidentdlis). — In the 

 Prize Essays and Transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland, vol. v. p. 322., 

 the Rev. G. J. Hamilton states that a severe frost in June 1809 destroyed 

 most of the largest American planes in England, and particularly in the neigh- 

 bourhood of London, while the Asiatic kinds escaped without injury, a suffi- 

 cient proof of their comparative hardiness. Granting the fact, I wish to know 

 the reason of the same species of trees surviving the exposure to a cold for 

 many daj's below of Fahrenheit's scale, and for months below the freezing 

 point. I never heard of any button wood sustaining injury from even the cold 

 of Canada. The tree is one of the most thrifty, and its form of great beauty : 

 the twisting of its branches, noticed in the Arboretum Britannicum, vol. iii. 

 p. 2047., is by no means common, and only occurs in a few of the lower 

 limbs. The cabinetmakers prize the wood for bedstead posts and frames. 

 Your account of the Platanus is highly interesting, but 1 need not select 

 that tree for the remark, for it applies to the whole work, of which the article 

 forms a part. No book in the English language, on any art or science, affords 

 me so much pleasure in reading as the Arboretum. Long may you live to 

 enjoy the honour of your useful labour! — J. M. Philadelphia, Oct. 1840. 



The Orange Groves of East Florida. (Vol. for 1840, p. 660.) — By some 

 strange inadvertence, Mr. Gordon, in the article referred to, has spoken of 

 these groves as if they were natural ; an obvious mistake, which we take 

 blame to ourselves for not noticing in the same Number in which Mr. Gordon's 

 article was published. Mr. Gordon has, no doubt, fallen into this mistake, 

 from the fact, well known to all botanical travellers in East Florida, of several 

 varieties of the orange being so common in some parts of that country, as to 

 sow themselves and appear like natives. We by no means wish to screen 

 ourselves, however, in this case or any other, from whatever blame may attach 

 to us, and therefore we gladly make this correction ; -but, in order that Mr. 

 Gordon may have an opportunity of explaining himself, we quote the passage 

 in which this error is referred to in the Gardener''s Chronicle, No. 3. 



" We have not a much better book than Loudon's Gardenei-'s Magazine : 

 yet the blunders in it, of which the worthy editor seems quite unconscious, 

 are astounding. In one of his last Numbers he allows a Mr. Alexander Gor- 

 don to assert that there are natural orange groves all over East Florida, 

 though every body knows that the orange is wild only in the temperate parts 

 of Eastern and Central Asia. This same gentleman even talks of the wild 

 or native orange having been used as a stock for the finer kinds of that fruit." 

 (Crito in Gardene/s Chronicle, Jan. 16., p. 37.) 



Quei-cus virens, Vhcllos, and pubescens, and JJ'lmus effiisa. In the same 

 publication, and immediately following the passage just quoted, is the follow- 



