320 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



and surround it with beautiful trees and a delightful garden, 

 if at the same time, in the background of this picture, and in 

 his own land, was a hideous morass remaining neglected 

 that might be covered with White Cedars ; or a bald and bar- 

 ren elevation, unfit for any purposes of tillage, remaining un- 

 covered with trees, by which it might be rendered the crown- 

 ing beauty of the landscape. Such a man resembles a 

 painter who should bestow particular pains to finish the fore- 

 ground of his picture with a superfluous degree of nicety, 

 while he left his background a slovenly daub. A knoll of 

 well-developed forest trees in a conspicuous part of the land- 

 scape is a more important object of consideration than a gar- 

 den, and one magnificent tree is worth more than a hundred 

 parterres. 



The wood of the White Cedar is exceedingly valuable for 

 its durability, and especially for its power of resisting the ac- 

 tion of alternate moisture and dryness. It is used, therefore, 

 more than any other timber for the "sleepers" of our rail- 

 roads — those destroyers of our forests — forests that will soon 

 disappear from the face of the earth, if the present rapid rate 

 of consumption does not soon drive men to consider the ne- 

 cessity of restoring them as fast as they are removed. And 

 when our climate, which is now a cold and a dry one, is 

 rendered still more severely cold and dry; when the moun- 

 tains and hills, stripped of their clothing of wood, afford no 

 protection from the sweep of the north wind, and supply no 

 more water to the rivers that irrigate the plains ; when heavy 

 showers, coming rarely and then profusely, leave no moisture 

 on the hills, but, rushing impetuously down, cause sudden 

 and destructive inundations in the valleys ; when the car- 

 penter and the ship-builder are obliged to send to distant 

 lands for timber which, for the same cause, has greatly 

 diminished, and is rapidly disappearing from the uttermost 

 parts of the earth ; when this land, which is now covered 

 with beautiful and magnificent forests, has become a waste 

 of naked hills and unprofitable valleys, and is alternately 

 visited by excessive drought in summer and by the cold of 

 the Arctic circle in winter : — will the unfortunate generation 



