THE TREES OF AMERICA. 13 



almost ready to fall, as if to protect it in its hour of need. The figure of the 

 vine protecting the tree in its old age and decrepitude, though very common, seems 

 like the rose, to lose none of its beauty for being so. Who has not seen, in a 

 group like this, old trees, entirely decayed at the bottom, still upheld against the 

 tempest and the storm by the clinging vine. . The female figure, in the foreground, 

 we have introduced, as -we found her, gathering berries by the road side, to help 

 eke out a scanty living, and yet here, as in all our experience, manifesting what 

 seems peculiarly to belong to the sex, woman's loveliest trait, pointing to the 

 highest development, the love of the beautiful. We have chosen the oak for 

 our border, as the representative of American trees, we having, I believe, more 

 than all the world besides ; there being forty-four species of native growth be- 

 tween the twentieth and forty-eighth degree of north latitude. England, proud 

 as she is of her oaks, (which deserve all her regard,) has but two species. We 

 might write a long chapter on our title page, so many things are there in it — 

 its variety of rocks, its many plants, including eight or ten species of the beau- 

 tiful trefoil, the purple eupatorium, the delicate blue vervain, and several species 

 of that flower which defies all attempts to tame it, (the yeUow geradia,) the despair 

 of the cultivator, but the joy of the bees and butterflies, and all the gay tribe 

 of honey-loving insects. But we hope that we have already said enough to con- 

 vince every one of the great sources of enjoyment which are aU around us, and 

 which a little study of natural history would open to our vision. A single hand's 

 breadth of the earth's surface not unfrequently contains twenty or thirty species 

 of plants. That eminent naturalist Professor Agassis once said that he could 

 spend a whole life upon the border of one of our small ponds, and yet find enough 

 about which to be profitably and pleasantly employed. 



