USES OF THE FORESTS. 7 
shire were stripped of their woods, they would be converted 
into broad reaches of upland, from which most of their beauty 
would have departed. The striking feature in that charm- 
ing country is the old forest, on the sides of its hills, here 
and there irregularly broken in upon by cultivation. The 
northern and southern sides of Boston are not essentially unlike 
in their natural features; yet the hills of Brookline and Rox- 
bury, capped with hickory, and whose sides are clothed with 
oaks and pines, give the impression of a rich and happy coun- 
try, of which only pleasant memories are carried away, while 
the bare hills of Chelsea suggest images of bleak and barren 
desolation. ‘Three or four trees upon Apple Island make it a 
gem among the islands in Boston Harbor. What a scene would 
the Bay present, if all the islands were so covered ! 
No element of beauty is so completely manageable as trees; 
and our resources in that respect are surprisingly great. Nit- 
uated in the middle of the temperate zone, we have, in Massa- 
chusetts, all the best of the deciduous trees, the oaks, elms, 
beeches, ashes, hickories, walnuts, cherries, maples, the chest- 
nut, linden and button-wood, of the temperate regions, together 
with the finest of the evergreens, the pines, firs, spruces, cedars 
and hemlock, and the delicate birches, of a more northern cli- 
mate. Each one of these trees has its own peculiar and dis- 
tinctly marked character, recognizable at a distance, and pro- 
ducing an effect which needs not to be mistaken for that of any 
other. Each has its own cycle of change, its own time of flow- 
ering, and of perfecting its fruit, and of opening, maturing, 
changing and casting its foliage. Each has its own shape and 
its own color, distinguishing it from every other tree, even of 
the species most nearly allied. Hence the endless variety of 
forest scenery. Here are more than fifty elements shading off 
and blending into each other in imperceptible gradations, ac- 
cording as you recede from the coast to the interior, as you go 
north or south, or as you rise from the plain into the mountains. 
We have here representatives of the vegetations of the warmer 
and of the colder regions; but as you go north, first the hicko- 
ries, then most of the other nut-bearing trees, then others grad- 
