290 TREES. 



a tree of any kind, is never so fully developed as when, in a genial 

 soil and climate, it stands quite alone, stretching its boughs upward 

 freely to the sky, and outward to the breeze, and even downward 

 towards the earth almost touching it with their graceful sweep, till 

 only a glimpse of the fine trunk is had at its spreading base, and 

 the whole top is one great globe of floating, waving, drooping, or 

 sturdy luxuriance, giving one as perfect an idea of symmetry and 

 proportion, as can be found short of the Grecian Apollo itself. 



We have taken the pains to present this beau-ideal of a fine or- 

 namental tree to our readers, in order to contrast it with another pic- 

 ture, not from nature but by the hands of quite another master. 



This master is the man whose passion is to prune trees. To his 

 mind, there is nothing comparable to the satisfaction of trimming a 

 tree. A tree in a state of nature is a no more respectable object than 

 an untamed savage. It is running to waste with leaves and bran- 

 ches, and has none of the look of civilization about it. Only let him 

 use his saw for a short time, upon any young specimen just growing 

 into adolescence, and throwing out its delicate branches like a fine 

 fall of drapery, to conceal its naked trunk, and you shall see how 

 he will improve its appearance. Yes, he will trim up those branches 

 till there is a tall, naked stem, higher than his head. That shows 

 that the tree has been taken care of has been trimmed ergo, 

 trained and educated into a look of respectability. This is his great 

 point the fundamental law of sylvan beauty in his mind a bare 

 pole with a top of foliage at the end of it. 'If he cannot do this, 

 he may content himself with thinning out the branches to let in the 

 light, or clipping them at the ends to send the head upwards, or 

 cutting out the leader to make it spread laterally. But though the 

 trees formed by these latter modes of pruning, are well enough, 

 they never reach that exalted standard, which has for its type, a pole 

 as bare as a ship's mast, with only a flying studding-sail of green 

 boughs at the end of it.* 



We suppose this very common pleasure for it must be a 

 pleasure which so many persons find in trimming up ornamental 



* Some of our readers may not be aware that to cut off the side branches 

 on a young trunk, actually lessens the growth in diameter of that trunk at 

 once. 



