ENGLISH AND AMERICAN FLOWERS '209 



General Aspect of American Rural Scenery. 



A few remarks on the general aspects of the country 

 as regards native vegetation and flowers must conclude 

 this very imperfect sketch. What most impresses the 

 nature-loving Englishman while travelling in America is, 

 the newness and rawness of the country, and the almost 

 universal absence of that harmonious interblending of 

 wild nature with human cultivation, which is so charming- 

 over a large part of England. In these North-Eastern 

 States, the native forests have been so ruthlessly destroyed 

 that fine trees are comparatively rare, and such noble 

 elms, beeches, oaks, and sycamores as are to be found 

 arching over the lanes and shading the farmhouses and 

 cottages in a thousand English villages, are only to be 

 seen near a few of the towns in the older settled States, 

 or as isolated specimens which are regarded as something 

 remarkable. Instead of the old hedgerows with tall elms, 

 spreading oaks, and an occasional beech, hornbeam, birch, 

 or holly, we see everywhere the ugly snake -fence of split 

 rails, or the still more unsightly boundary of barbed wire. 

 Owing to the country being mostly cut up into one-mile 

 square sections, subdivided into quarters, along the outer 

 boundaries of which is the only right-of-way for access to 

 the different farms, the chief country roads or tracks zig- 

 zag along these section-lines without any regard to the 

 contours of the land. It is probably owing to the cost of 

 labour and the necessity of bringing large areas under 

 cultivation as quickly as possible, that our system of 

 fencing by live hedges, growing on a bank, with a ditch 

 on one side for drainage, seems to be absolutely unknown 

 in America ; and hence the constant references of English 

 writers on rural scenery and customs to " the ditch," or 

 " the hedge," are unintelligible to most Americans. 



The extreme rapidity with which the land has been 

 cleared of its original forest seems to have favoured the 

 spread of imjDorted weeds, many of which are specially 

 adapted to seize upon and monopolise newly exposed or 

 loosened soil ; and this has prevented the native plants, 



VOL. I. P 



