296 TREES. 



same in their own grounds ; and thus this tree or plant would soon 

 become widely distributed about the whole adjacent country. An- 

 other season, still another desirable tree or plant might be taken in 

 hand, and when ready for home planting, might be scattered broad- 

 cast among those who desire to possess it, and so the labor of love 

 might go on as convenience dictated, till the greater part of the gar- 

 dens, however small, within a considerable circumference, would con- 

 tain at least several of the most valuable, useful, and ornamental 

 trees and shrubs for the climate. 



The second means is by what the nurserymen may do. 



We are very well aware that the first thought which will cross 

 the mind of a selfish and narrow-minded nurseryman, (if any such 

 read the foregoing paragraph,) is that such a course of gratuitous 

 distribution of good plants, on the part of private persons, will 

 speedily ruin his business. But he was never more greatly 

 mistaken, as both observation and reason will convince him. Who 

 are the nurseryman's best customers? That class of men who 

 have long owned a garden, whether it be half a rood or many 

 acres, who have never planted trees or, if any, have but those not 

 worth planting ? Not at all. His best customers are those who 

 have formed a taste for trees by planting them, and who, having 

 got a taste for improving, are seldom idle in the matter, and keep 

 pretty regular accounts with the dealers in trees. If you cannot 

 get a person who thinks he has but little time or taste for improving 

 his place to buy trees, and he will accept a plant, or a fruit-tree, or 

 a shade-tree, now and then, from a neighbor whom he knows to be 

 "curious in such things" by all means, we say to the nursery- 

 man, encourage him to plant at any rate and all rates. 



If that man's tree turns out to his satisfaction, he is an amateur, 

 one only beginning to pick the shell, to be sure but an amateur 

 fall fledged by-and-by. If he once gets a taste for gardening down- 

 right if the flavor of his own rareripes touch his palate but once, 

 as something quite different from what he has always, like a con- 

 tented, ignorant donkey, bought in the market if his Malmaison 

 rose, radiant with the sentiment of the best of French women, and 

 the loveliness of intrinsic bud-beauty once touches his hitherto dull 

 eyes, so that the scales of his blindness to the fact that one rose 



