1867. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



227 



For the Kew England Farmer. 

 DESTRTJCTION OF TREES AND 

 SHRUBS. 



Many years ago, at a time when I was con- 

 fined, thi-ough the best part of every year, to 

 an absorbing and laborious employment in the 

 city, 1, one day, weary of brick walls and 

 liinty pavements, escaped from town, and, has- 

 tening to enjoy the wildness and beauty of the 

 woods and fields, rode towards a lane, the 

 very thought of which had always been refresh- 

 ing to me. There I expected to be at once 

 surrounded by the trees and shrubs which be- 

 longed there, such as gradually border a road 

 in the country, when left to itself. What was 

 my disappointment to find them all gone, and 

 my delicious green lane reduced to a bare, 

 vulgar, dusty, country road. The owner of 

 the land on the two sides had been seized with 

 a disease to which men of little taste are liable, 

 the mania for improvement, and in a paroxysm 

 of the malady, had ordered all the beautiful 

 shrubbery and thriving young trees to be cut 

 down, and the land between the road and the 

 walls to be burnt over. Never, by a single 

 operation, was so much beauty destroyed and 

 so much ugliness and deformity left to'take its 

 place. 



The pretty winding lane had been shaded from 

 the sun in summer and sheltered from the cold 

 winds at all seasons, and its thickets had thus 

 become a resort of the birds, whose earliest 

 notes might be heard there in the end of win- 

 ter, and whose evening songs were sure to 

 greet me there in the summer evening twilight. 

 As I passed along that road, I loved to let my 

 horse walk -while I dwelt upon the thought, 

 what a charming residence for summer, or for 

 the whole year might be, perhaps may be, built 

 on that lane. Since its desecration, I have 

 never for a moment had a feeling which would 

 suggest such a thouglit ; I have avoided with 

 a shudder what had long been a favorite path. 



A A ery few years ago, a siiiiilar violation of 

 the principles of good taste was committed, I 

 hope thouglitlessly, on a road Avhich was for- 

 merly the Boston and Worcester turnpike, in 

 that portion of it which is in Brookline, near- 

 est the edge of Newton. Tlie natural, beau- 

 tiful growth on both sides of the road has been 

 destroyed, and a row of unprotected trees sub- 

 stituted. The trees are not bad in themselves, 

 but how far less beautiful than the original 

 denizens of the forest with their natural grace, 

 w!;ose ',)Iace they have taken. No attempt has 

 been made to supply the loss of the exquisite 

 shrubbery. The person who suffered this out- 

 rage to be perpetrated was evidently one who 

 ought to have known better. He has built a 

 noble wall and planted these few trees between 

 it and the road. He probably gave only gen- 

 eral directions, and entrusted the execution of 

 his improvement to some stupid barbarian, and 

 he may be, at this moment, suiTering as much 

 as I suffer whenever I pass that way, from the 

 loss and ruin he has occasioned. 



A young friend of delicate taste and refined 

 perception of natural beauty, tells me that such 

 things are even now done, not many miles from 

 Boston ; and she gives me a case where the of- 

 f(>nder was, — not an individual misled by a false 

 theory of improvement of his own property, but 

 — a town officer, who ought to have been not 

 the violator, but the guardian of public and of 

 private rights, and one on whom an aggrieved 

 lady might confidently rely for protection. 



Outside my friend's fields, and between her 

 fence and the public highway which ran along 

 one side of her farm, was a space of one o'r 

 two rods, planted by the hand of nature, 

 with the usual shrubs and trees which grow 

 wild in Middlesex. She valued this border as 

 at once_ a screen from passers on the road, a 

 protection from wind and sun, in her own 

 walks and drives, and a graceful border to her 

 land, a delicate fringe, of varying colors, to the 

 homely green and browns of "her meadows and 

 cultivated lands. During a temporary absence, 

 a surveyor of roads suffered, perhaps ordered, 

 this precious hem to be torn and ripped away. 

 The trees were cut down and the bushes grub- 

 bed up. 



She knows not, and I know not, whether she 

 has or has not a remedy by law for the injury 

 she has suffered. In the' nature of things, 

 there is no remedy. Her beautiful border is 

 gone; and it would take thirty years, with the 

 best intentions and the most skilful manage- 

 ment, to bring it back and make it what it was ; 

 and, in that time, youth and much of woman- 

 hood will have past, and the enjoyment she 

 M-ould have had from it, for all these years, 

 will be absolutely lost. 



A sense of my own loss from the vandalism 

 I have described, my sympathy with a dear 

 friend in what she has suffered, and my fear 

 that others may be sulTering or likely to suffer, 

 in the same way, who have none to speak for 

 them, have led me to trouble you, Messrs. Edi- 

 tors, with this communication. If you agree 

 with me so far as to allow it to be published, 

 I shall ask to be permitted to give some rea- 

 sons, in a future paper, why the evils of which 

 I have spoken should henceforth be guarded 

 against. G. B. e. 



Boston, Marcli. 1867. 



For the Kew England Farmer. 



BEST TIME TO APPLY MANURES. 



The Svcretiiry <A th-j Ir;;sburg, \i.. Far- 

 mers' Club, fiu-nishes the following sketch of 

 the discussion of this important subject at a 

 late meeting of the Club. 



Z. E. Jameson thought that the plan of ap- 

 plying manure as soon as convenient after it 

 is made, was growing in favor with farmers, 

 and that manure heaps are not desirable or 

 profitable about the barns. Those who are 

 partial to old manure will then have it, of all 

 ages, in the soil. No great loss will be sus- 



