120 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



can realize in a practical way, it is not difficult to see that Novem- 

 ber, dreary as it may seem to the cockneys who have rushed back 

 to gas-lights and the paved streets of the city, is full of interest, and 

 even excitement, to the real lover of the country. 



It is, however, one of the characteristics of the human mind to 

 overlook that which is immediately about us, however admirable, 

 and to attach the greatest importance to whatever is rare, and diffi- 

 cult to be obtained. A remarkable illustration of the truth of this, 

 may be found in the ornamental gardening of this country, which is 

 noted for the strongly marked features made in its artificial scenery 

 by certain poorer sorts of foreign trees, as well as the almost total 

 neglect of finer native materials, that are indigenous to the soil. 

 We will undertake to say, for example, that almost one-half of all 

 the deciduous trees that have been set in ornamental plantations for 

 the last ten years, have been composed, for the most part, of two 

 very indifferent foreign trees the ailantus and the silver poplar. 

 When we say indifferent, we do not mean to say that such trees as 

 the ailantus and the silver poplar, are not valuable trees in their 

 way that is, that they are rapid growing, will thrive in all soils, and 

 are transplanted with the greatest facility suiting at once both the 

 money-making grower and the ignorant planter but we do say, 

 that when such trees as the American elms, maples and oaks, can 

 be raised with so little trouble trees as full of grace, dignity, and 

 beauty, as any that grow in any part of the world trees, too, that 

 go on gathering new beauty with age, instead of throwing up suck- 

 ers that utterly spoil lawns, or that become, after the first few years, 

 only a more intolerable nuisance every day it is time to protest 

 against the indiscriminate use of such sylvan materials no matter 

 how much of " heavenly origin," or " silvery " foliage, they may have 

 in their well sounding names. 



It is by no means the fault of the nurserymen, that their nurse- 

 ries abound in ailantuses and poplars, while so many of our fine 

 forest trees are hardly to be found. The nurserymen are bound to 

 pursue their business so as to make it profitable, and if people ignore 

 oaks and ashes, and adore poplars and ailantuses, nurserymen can- 

 not be expected to starve because the planting public generally are 

 destitute of taste. 



