Four Trees 



intrinsic beauty is certainly not so great 

 that general beauty should for its sake be 

 sacrificed. In a beautiful place we shall not 

 find any avenue of purple beeches, any great 

 bed of yellow shrubs, or any speckling and 

 spotting of such shrubs among the green 

 ones, no more than we shall find a big ex- 

 panse of coleus taking the place of an emer- 

 ald lawn. Green is Nature's livery, and I am 

 borrowing an old English v/riter's phrase 

 when I say that it is easy to put too many 

 gaudy stripes and bright buttons upon this 

 livery. 



And now for our fourth tree — the little 

 white birch, or gray birch, which we love 

 so well in its native v/oods and plant so often 

 in our home-grounds ; or, if not this tree 

 precisely, then the European cousin which 

 closely resembles it. 



This birch is not exactly an eccentric tree, 

 but it is a pecuhar tree, a very decided 

 little tree, with a character all its own. 

 None, perhaps, has given our landscape- 

 gardeners more trouble. Everyone knows 

 it, everyone hkes it and wants it, andevery- 

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