TREES IN TOWNS AND VILLAGES. 309 



would be an avenue of our finest and hardiest native oaks rich in 

 foliage and grand in every part of their trunks and branches.* 



Though we think our native weeping elm, or sugar maple, and 

 two or three of our oaks, the finest of street trees for country villages, 

 yet there are a great many others which may be adopted, when the 

 soil is their own, with the happiest effect. What could well be 

 more beautiful, for example, for a village with a deep, mellow soil, 

 than a long avenue of that tall and most elegant tree, the tulip-tree 

 or whitewood ? For a village in a mountainous district, like New 

 Lebanon, in this State, we would perhaps choose the white pine, 

 which would produce a grand and striking effect. In Ohio, the 

 cucumber-tree would make one of the noblest and most admirable 

 avenues, and at the south what could be conceived more captivating 

 than a village whose streets were lined with rows of the magnolia 

 grandiflora ? We know how little common minds appreciate these 

 natural treasures ; how much the less because they are common in 

 the woods about them. Still, such are the trees which should be 

 planted ; for fine forest trees are fast disappearing, and planted trees, 

 grown in a soil fully congenial to them, will, as we have already 

 said, assume a character of beauty and grandeur that will arrest the 

 attention and elicit the admiration of every traveller. 



The variety of trees for cities densely crowded cities is but 

 small; and this, chiefly, because the warm brick walls are such 

 hiding-places and nurseries for insects, that many fine trees fine for 

 the country and for rural towns become absolute pests in the cities. 

 Thus, in Philadelphia, we have seen, with regret, whole rows of the 

 European linden cut down within the last ten years, because this 

 tree, in cities, is so infested with odious worms, that it often becomes 

 unendurable. On this account that foreign tree, the ailanthus, the 

 strong scented foliage of which no insect will attack, is every day 

 becoming a greater metropolitan favorite. The maples are among 

 the thriftiest and most acceptable trees for large cities, and no one 

 of them is more vigorous, cleaner, hardier, or more graceful than the 

 silver maple (Acer eriocarpum). 



* The oak is easily transplanted from the nurseries though not from 

 the -woods, unless in the latter case, it has been prepared a year beforehand 

 by shortening the roots and branches. 



