MAY. 245 



and expand to their greatest breadth, witliout coming in con- 

 tact with the building. Their dense and tremulous foHage, 

 their balsamic fragrance, and their elegant pyramidal forms 

 seemed justly to render them favorites with a preceding gen- 

 eration. As they were luiable to withstand the severity of 

 our winters, many of their branches annually withered, and 

 they became thereby so greatly disfigured, that people were 

 induced to cut them down, and plant other trees in their 

 places. They fell into very general disgrace ; and, amidst 

 the ridicule that was cast upon them for their primness and 

 general spinster-like appearance, their good qualities, like 

 those of a clever old maid, were overlooked or forgotten. 



The substitutes for these trees are chiefly Balsam firs, which 

 possess to a greater extreme those qualities of stiffness and 

 primness which were condemned in the Ijombardy poplar, 

 without the beauties of the latter. The firs, with a foliage 

 that is perfectly motionless, are now to be found in almost 

 every front yard, standing like a military guard, with their 

 guns pointing, as if they were ready to fire. These trees, in 

 the open pasture, when they have attained their full height 

 and proportions, are stately and beautiful. But when crowded 

 into the narrow enclosures of our front yards, as they send 

 out their branches at right angles with the main stem, those 

 on the side next the house soon become leafless or abortive, 

 the tree gradually loses its symmetry, the foliage of the inte- 

 rior branches withers, and the tree looks at length as if it had 

 been half consumed by fire. What little beauty these trees 

 possess, when they are young, is of a stiff and formal charac- 

 ter, and this is lost when they have attained the height of 

 about twenty feet. It is often regretted that some more val- 

 uable and durable trees were not planted by our predecessors, 

 instead of the short-lived Italian poplars, whose places are 

 now mostly vacant. Ten or twelve years hence we shall 

 equally regret the present rage for spruces and firs. No single 

 species of coniferous evergreens is proper for our front enclo- 

 sures. A grove of these trees would make an excellent bul- 

 wark to defend us from the north winds; but we do not want 

 them to keep the sun's rays from our windows in the winter, 

 when this is the only purpose they serve. 



