VI. 



RAKE EVERGREEN TREES. 



June, 1847. 



AN American may be allowed some honest pride in the beauty 

 and profusion of fine forest trees, natives of our western hemi- 

 sphere. North America is the land of oaks, pines, and magnolias, 

 to say nothing of the lesser genera ; and the parks and gardens of 

 all Europe owe their choicest sylvan treasures to our native woods 

 and hills. 



But there is one tree, almost every where naturalized in Europe 

 an evergreen tree as pre-eminently grand and beautiful among 

 evergreens, as a proud ship of the line among little coasting-vessels 

 a historical tree, as rich in sacred and poetic association as Mount 

 Sinai itself a hardy tree, from a region of mountain snows, which 

 bears the winter of the middle States ; and yet, notwithstanding all 

 these unrivalled claims to attention, we believe there are not at this 

 moment a dozen good specimens of it, twenty feet high, in the 

 United States. 



We mean, of course, that world-renowned tree, the Cedar of 

 Lebanon : that tree which was the favorite of 4he wisest of kings ; 

 the wood of which kindled the burnt-offerings of the Israelites in the 

 time of Moses ; of which was built the temple of Solomon, and 

 which the Prophet Ezekiel so finely used as a simile in describing 

 a great empire ; " Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, 

 with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of a high 

 stature ; and his top was among the thick boughs. His boughs 

 were multiplied, and his branches became long. The fir-trees were 



