TREES AND SHRUBS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 205 



was published twenty-five years ago, " agreeably to an order 

 of the Legislature, by the Commissioners on the Zoological 

 and Botanical Survey of the State " of Massachusetts, being 

 a supplement to the Geological Survey of that period, prose- 

 cuted under Edward Everett's governorship. It was the most 

 popular report of the series, and the edition was ere long 

 exhausted. When this came to pass — without waiting for 

 the new survey which the State last year came near authoriz- 

 ing but failed to do so — Mr. Emerson, unassisted, set about 

 the preparation of a new edition, devoted several years to it, 

 and to the study of what had been done for the preservation 

 and utilization of forests in the Old World, and for their 

 waste and destruction here in the New ; and he has at length 

 brought out this second edition, in two goodly octavo volumes, 

 illustrated and adorned by a large number of w^ell-executed 

 plates. These being interspersed through the pages, unnum- 

 bered, and nowhere enumerated, the only way of ascertaining 

 their actual amount was to count them. We find 144 plates, 

 of various kinds and merits.' The least satisfying to us 

 are those of portraitistic or scenic character, borrowed from 

 the German " Der Wald " and the very French " Vegetable 

 World " of Figuier ; yet to others these may be the most 

 attractive. Very good, though unpretending, are figures, 

 mainly in outline, contributed by Mr. Isaac Sprague to the 

 first edition, here reproduced. Best of all are those contrib- 

 uted by the same hand to the new edition, original figures of 

 the foliage, flowers, and fruit of many of our trees and shrubs 

 not before illustrated, transferred from Sprague's drawings to 

 stone, and printed in colors. The plates representing our two 

 northern Azaleas, the Roxbury Waxwork (as they name it 

 around Boston), the Virginian Creeper in its autumn dress ; 

 the Red Maple, both in vernal and autumnal robes ; and the 

 Flowering Raspberry, from which seemingly one may almost 

 shake the mountain dew, are good illustrations of what may 

 be done in this way. Hand-coloring is too expensive, and 

 chromo-lithography can really be turned to excellent account 

 in its place for natural-history illustrations, whatever be its 

 merits or demerits in other regions of art. The letter-press 



