182 DECIDUOUS TREES 



Again, we may be quite unconscious that we worship Show, 

 but we do. For we go about our friends' country places admiring 

 their golden elders, weeping hemlocks, cut-leaved maples, and 

 other "horticultural varieties." These things do not exist in 

 nature but are, in a sense, creations of the nurserymen. They are 

 like jewellery or spice or slang to be used in moderation, but we 

 ordinarily make them the dominant features of our home grounds. 

 I trust that the readers of this book are not immoderately fond of 

 loud clothes, cheap jewellery, rag-time or slang, but the trees Ameri- 

 cans plant most are analogous to these things. We can never 

 achieve the mellowness of the English landscape by such a route. 

 For, even at their best, horticultural varieties are transitory 

 and undignified compared with their prototypes. They make 

 for restlessness, not repose. 



If I could deliver to the American people a golden treasure- 

 box containing the most precious thought that England has to 

 give her sister about her trees, that thought might be expressed 

 somewhat as follows : "The most valuable quality in any landscape 

 is mellowness, and this can be attained only when long-lived trees 

 are in the majority. Two thousand years of change have made 

 our English people enthusiastic lovers of enduring things. A 

 thousand years from now you Americans will have the same spirit, 

 and America will be quite as mellow as England. For half the 

 trees one can then see in any direction will be a century or more 

 old. And they will not be the trees you now plant by the million, 

 such as poplars, willows, soft maples, and others. They will be 

 oaks, beeches, lindens, and the like, for slow-growing trees are the 

 only ones that can achieve great age and stature. Your job, as in- 

 dividuals, is to recognize this law of evolution and put your home 

 grounds in harmony with it." 



