340 TREES. 



plants even of well known and tolerably abundant species, by tell- 

 ing us that amateurs and nurserymen who annually import from 

 him every new and rare exotic that the richest collections of Europe 

 possessed, could scarcely be prevailed upon to make a search for 

 native American plants, far more beautiful, which grow in the woods 

 not ten miles from their own doors. Some of them were wholly 

 ignorant of such plants, except so far as a familiarity with their 

 names in the books may be called an acquaintance. Others knew 

 them, but considered them " wild plants," and therefore, too little 

 deserving of attention to be worth the trouble of collecting, even for 

 curious foreigners. " And so," he continued, " in a country of azaleas, 

 kalmias, rhododendrons, cypripediums, magnolias and nysas, 

 the loveliest flowers, shrubs, and trees of temperate climates, you 

 never put them in your gardens, but send over the water every year 

 for thousands of dollars worth of English larches and Dutch hya- 

 cinths. Voila le gout Republicain ! " 



In truth, we felt that we quite deserved the sweeping sarcasm of 

 our Belgian friend. We had always, indeed, excused ourselves for 

 the well known neglect of the riches of our native Flora, by saying 

 that what we can see any day in the woods, is not the thing by 

 which to make a garden distinguished and that since all mankind 

 have a passion for novelty, where, as in a fine foreign tree or shrub, 

 both beauty and novelty are combined, so much the greater is the 

 pleasure experienced. But, indeed, one has only to go to England, 

 where " American plants " are the fashion, (not undeservedly, too,) 

 to learn' that he knows very little about the beauty of American 

 plants. The difference between a grand oak or magnolia, or tulip- 

 tree, grown with all its graceful and majestic development of head, 

 in a park where it has nothing to interfere with its expansion but 

 sky and air, and the same tree shut up in a forest, a quarter of a 

 mile high, with only a tall gigantic mast of a stem, and a tuft of 

 foliage at the top, is the difference between the best bred and highly 

 cultivated man of the day, and the best buffalo hunter of the Rocky 

 Mountains, with his sinewy body tattooed and tanned till you scarcely 

 know what is the natural color of the skin. A person accustomed 

 to the wild Indian only, might think he knew perfectly well what a 

 man is and so indeed he does, if you mean a red man. But the 



