302 TREES. 



spirited man in Boston does a great service to the community, and 

 earns the thanks of his countrymen, by giving fifty thousand dollars 

 to endow a professorship in a college ; let the public spirited man 

 of the more humble village in the interior, also establish his claim 

 to public gratitude, by planting fifty trees annually, along its public 

 streets, in quarters where there is the least ability or the least taste 

 to be awakened in this way, or where the poverty of the houses 

 most needs something to hide them, and give an aspect of shelter 

 and beauty. Hundreds of public meetings are called, on subjects 

 not half so important to the welfare of the place as this, whose 

 object would be to direct the attention of all the householders to 

 the nakedness of their estates, in the eyes of those who most love 

 our country, and would see her rural towns and village homes made 

 as attractive and pleasant as they are free and prosperous. 



We pointed out, in a former article, the principle that should 

 guide those who are about to select trees for streets of rural towns 

 that of choosing that tree which the soil of the place will bring 

 to the highest perfection. There are two trees, however, which are 

 so eminently adapted to this purpose in the Northern States, that 

 they may be universally employed. These are the American weeping 

 elm and the silver maple. They have, to recommend them, in the first 

 place, great rapidity of growth ; in the second place, the graceful 

 forms which they assume ; in the third place, abundance of fine 

 foliage ; and lastly, the capacity of adapting themselves to almost 

 every soil where trees will thrive at all. 



These two trees have broad and spreading heads, fit for wide 

 streets and avenues. That fine tree, the Dutch elm, of exceedingly 

 rapid growth and thick dark-green foliage, makes a narrower and 

 more upright head than our native sort, and, as well as the sugar 

 maple, may be planted in streets and avenues, where there is but 

 little room for the expansion of wide spreading tops. 



No town, where any of these trees are extensively planted, can 

 be otherwise than agreeable to the eye, whatever may be its situa- 

 tion, or the style of its dwellings. To villages prettily built, they 

 will give a character of positive beauty, that will both add to the 

 value of property, and increase the comfort and patriotism of the 

 inhabitants. 



