TREES IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES. 30*7 



their hearts, as one does a picture drawn by poets, and colored by 

 the light of some divine genius. 



We heartily commend, therefore, this plan of Social Planting 

 Reform, to every desolate, leafless, and repulsive town and village in 

 the country. There can scarcely be one, where there are not three 

 persons of taste and spirit enough to organize such a society ; and 

 once fairly in operation, its members will never cease to congratulate 

 themselves on the beauty and comfort they have produced. Every 

 tree which they plant, and which grows up in after years into a 

 giant trunk and grand canopy of foliage, will be a better monument 

 (though it may bear no lying inscription) than many an unmeaning 

 obelisk of marble or granite. 



Let us add a few words respecting the best trees for adorning 

 the streets of rural towns and villages. With the great number and 

 variety of fine trees which flourish in this country, there is abundant 

 reason for asking, "where shall we choose?" And although we 

 must not allow ourselves space at this moment, to dwell upon the 

 subject in detail, we may venture two or three hints about it. 



Nothing appears to be so captivating to the mass of human 

 beings, as novelty. And there is a fashion in trees, which sometimes 

 has a sway no less rigorous than that of a Parisian modiste. Hence, 

 while we have the finest indigenous, ornamental trees in the world, 

 growing in our native forests, it is not an unusual thing to see them 

 blindly overlooked for foreign species, that have not half the real 

 charms, and not a tenth part of the adaptation to our soil and 

 climate. 



Thirty years ago, there was a general Lombardy poplar epidemic. 

 This tall and formal tree, striking and admirable enough, if very 

 sparingly introduced in landscape planting, is, of all others, most 

 abominable, in its serried stiffness and monotony, when planted in 

 avenues, or straight lines. Yet nine-tenths of all the ornamental 

 planting of that period, was made up of this now decrepit and con- 

 demned tree. 



So too, we recall one or two- of our villages, where the soil would 

 have produced any of our finest forest trees, yet where the only trees 

 thought worthy of attention by the inhabitants, are the ailanthus 

 and the paper mulberry 



