The Beauty of Trees 



know that the great, glossy, leathery leaves 

 of the evergreen magnolia are just what is 

 wanted in one spot, just what is not wanted 

 in another, and that, while the trembling 

 leaves of the aspen and the drooping, fringe- 

 like texture of the cut-leaved birch unfit them 

 for many positions, they make them especial- 

 ly valuable for others. He would know that 

 with every change of position and environ- 

 ment comes a change in the effect of the 

 texture of a tree, one sort looking best in 

 full sunhght, another in a shadowed spot, 

 or overhanging a stream, or set close against 

 the walls of a house. An artist feels all this 

 in advance if his profession be landscape- 

 gardening j and he feels it at least in intelli- 

 gent appreciation of existing results if it be 

 some other branch of art, for it is every ar- 

 tist's habit to appraise all that he sees for the 

 three properties of form, texture, and color. 

 But how few amateur planters feel it in ad- 

 vance ; how few lovers of trees judge their 

 own or their neighbors' places with such 

 tests in mind ! Even when questions of 

 form and of color are somewhat regarded, 

 questions of texture very seldom are. Yet 



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