INTKODUCTOEY. 



The writer has been asked by the Editor of the 

 Gazette to prepare something of local interest in regard 

 to plant life, and has chosen the trees for his subject 

 because there has been of late considerable interest 

 shown in them, and for the very good reason, too, that 

 in many ways they are easy to write about. 



The most common, most conspicuous, and most 

 accessible of all plants are the trees, and the grass- 

 es and sedges. They form the great bulk of vege- 

 tation in temperate regions, and yet most persons 

 know very little about them and very few of the 

 individual plants which make up this great mass of 

 vegetation by name. 



Many excellent amateur botanists are familiar with 

 even our rarer wild flowers and ferns, who never become 

 acquainted with the grasses or the native and exotic trees. 

 Of course nearly every one can tell an elm from an 

 oak, or a willow from a pine, but the difficulty seems 

 to be in telling the diflferent oaks and pines apart — 

 to distinguish the pines from the spruces, or the birch- 

 es from the horn-beams, or to separate the many 

 foreign trees in cultivation from the native species. 



In comparison with the miiltitude of herbaceous 

 plants with which one soon becomes familiar, the trees 

 are not numerous ; and a little observation will serve 

 to fix nearly all of them in mi'id and add much 



