HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 257 



trees, such as abound within the reach of every cultivator of the soil ? Is 

 our country to be made picturesque and lovely by the grouping of the ele- 

 gant specimens which are the pride of our forests, around our homesteads ? 

 Are we at last to become a nation with common sense? We have often al- 

 most worshipped the glorious avenues of live oaks — beautiful in their morn- 

 ing drapery of solemn moss, which add such distinct charms to the lower 

 sections of our state. We have admired the virgin-flowery magnolia, and 

 ask why is it not made welcome to every home in the state. The oak tribe 

 embracing nearly half a hundred varieties, and the lofty tulip trees, and the 

 graceful elms, and evergreen holly, and the cedar and the pine, all afford 

 much characteristic beauty to the true lover of nature. There is still a 

 lower fringe, of smaller trees and shrubs, upon the bosom of the earth, 

 which interspersed with these, add bizarre ornaments to the grouped sub- 

 jects of the forest. But when we write of these, we have brought to our 

 mind's eye a picture, pen-painted by Willis, which, striking upon the 

 chords of the heart through a vision of the satisfactory and beautiful, will 

 cause all who read it, to love the trees, which a sense of duty to coming 

 ages has caused them to cluster as enduring friends around them. For the 

 benefit of such, we extract from his "Letters from Under abridge," a Poet's 

 planting of a tree. 



"As I look out from under the bridge, I see an Oriole sitting upon a dog- 

 wood tree of my planting. His song drew my eye from the paper. I find 

 it difficult, now, not to take to myself the whole glory of tree, song and 

 plumage. By an easy delusion, I fancy he would not have come but for the 

 beauty of the tree, and that his song says as much, in bird-recitative. I go 

 back to one rainy day of April, when, hunting for maple saplings, I stopped 

 under that graceful tree, in a sort of Island jungle, and wondered what 

 grew so fair that was so unfamiliar, yet with a bark like the plumage of the 

 pencilled Pheasant. The limbs grew curiously. A lance-like stem, and, at 

 regular distance, a cluster of radiating branches, like a long cane thrust 

 through inverted parasols. I set to work with spade and pick, took it home 

 on my shoulder, and set it out by Glemmary brook, and there it stands to- 

 day, in the full glory of its leaves, having just shed the white blossoms 

 with which it kept holiday in June. Now the tree would have leaved and 

 flowered, and the Oriole, in black and gold, might perchance have swung 

 and sung on the slender branch, which is still tilting with his effort in 

 that last cadenza. But the fair picture it' makes to my eye, and the 

 delicious music in my ear, seem to me no less of my own making and 

 awaking. Is it the same tree, flowering unseen in the woods, or transplanted 



