Central Park 



been compressed than into their varied foliage, which, 

 however beautiful, the tree-student soon comes to 

 regard as a rather unmeaning adjunct. In fact, the 

 most superficial acquaintance with a tree is the knowl- 

 edge of its leaf — only a card of introduction ; foliage 

 is but the garb it wears a portion of the year, and it 

 conceals more than it reveals of vegetative nature. 

 Whoever can name a tree in winter may assume to know 

 it. Trunk, branch, twig, bark, grain, fibre, and even 

 the dormant bud are all sealed with the sign-manual of 

 some peculiar type, which is always distorted in forest- 

 growth, but has become realized in the favorable sur- 

 roundings of this great nature-garden. Never go to the 

 deep woods to study trees. A dense forest is a mass 

 of malformations, tall, spindling forms, each trying to 

 overtop its fellows, as if gasping for breath and strain- 

 ing for the light. 



In the single point of general figure, what contrasts 

 in the forms of the overarching elm, the slanting- 

 branched maple, the cylindrical tulip-tree, the round- 

 topped, almost globular horse-chestnut, the beech wide- 

 spreading with slender, horizontal, tremulously straight 

 boughs, the angular, stubborn-visaged oak, the coarse- 

 branched hickory and ailanthus, the spindling, effemi- 

 nate Lombardy poplar, the curious ginkgo, the languid, 

 refined white birch, the sprawling catalpa, all arms and 

 legs like an ungainly school-boy, the spruce little aspen 

 that ought to carry a little cane, the stately cottonwood, 

 a senator indeed, the conical red cedar, the tall-shafted 

 white pine, the king of trees. 



How typical and ever varied the bark, one of the 

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