American Gardening 



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FEBRUARY 1892 



No. 2 



THE GIFT OF TONGUES IN TREES 



AS VARIED AS 1 



THE OLD POPLARS. 

 There's a grim row of sentries along the hillside 



We pass, when to climb the steep pathway we try ; 

 'Tis the dear row of poplars we cherish with pride, 



As they stand there like giants against the blue sky. 

 Cho. — The storm-riven poplars, the moss-covered poplars, 



The rough, giant poplars that stand by the way. 

 They stand there so proudly, as bearing the brunt 



Of the rough blasts of winter which through their leaves play, 

 Like stern vet'ran warriors in battle's dark front ; 



But their falling leaves tell us they 're passing away. 

 Cho.— The loved chain of poplars, the dear band of poplars. 



The long-living poplars, are passing away. 

 O friends of our boyhood and past generations, 



Like you, to reach upward be ever our aim, 

 Unscathed by the storms of life's toil and temptations, 



Unflinching in duty, unsullied in fame. 

 Cho.— Oh long live the poplars, the friendly old poplars ! 



The heaven-pointing poplars that stand by the way. 



[VERY TREE has 



One can be understood by me ; 

 another by you ; few by all. 

 I was pleased by that group of 

 hemlocks in the November 

 Garden. It is the very group, 

 what there is left of it, that Sconondo, 

 the Oneida chieftain, is said to have 

 loved so well to sit beneath with his friend 

 Dominie Kirkland, missionary to his tribe. 

 The trees stand on a high bluff looking over 

 the Oriskany valley, and now over the graves of 

 both Indian and white man. They sleep in the 

 cemetery of the college they together founded. It 

 is supposed that Sconondo pointed at those very 

 trees, or referred to them when he made his elo- 

 quent and famous speech : " I am an aged hemlock. 

 The winds of a hundred winters have whistled 

 through my boughs." These trees are now cer- 

 tainly 200 years old. 



SPEECH OF MEN. 



Professor Edward North, president of Hamilton 

 College, once spoke of some of the historic trees of 

 central New York as "talking trees." No man ever 

 had a keener comprehension of life's language as 

 spoken by his forests of friends ; no one ever had a 

 more poetic soul and pen to translate the words 

 that whisper and whisper, on and on, seeking for 

 ears and souls. He spoke of " the elms that droop 

 so hospitably and caressingly over the village walks 

 — the Kirkland elms whispering a benison on Hill- 

 ward Way." Is there any tree that stands more for 

 America at large, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 

 than the white elm ? How superbly it lifts its arms 

 aloft toward the skies, and then as gracefully bends 

 them downward until its finger-tips sweep the sod. 

 The old elm which your artist has selected is one of 

 a noble grove through which the earlier settlers cut 

 their highway. But so stately were those trees 

 that, with exceptional generosity, they were left to 

 stand in the very roadway. Actually, these sons 

 of New Englanders, full of thrift to the last chip, 

 turned out and drove around this one, and another 

 and another. What a waste of firewood ! At last, 

 only a few years ago, a man whose soul reposed 

 gently in his boots, cut down some of the finest 

 specimens, and his fast horse can now go without a 

 swerve, straight to the grocery. We have lost in this 

 section some of the rarest, most priceless elms 

 in the last ten years. We need a tree-protecting 

 law of the most stringent sort — one that will prevent 

 any one from cutting a tree out of the highway 

 without permit of a county forestry commission. 



"Not many parks in the land," says a recent 

 writer, "afford more beautiful views than Hamilton 

 College campus, with its winding foot-paths, car- 

 riage-drives, shade-trees, shrubbery and hedges. A 



