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SCIENCE OF THE STUDY OF TREES. 



PART II. 



other particulars which may be considered botanical, will be of great assist- 

 ance to an artist, in enabling him to correct his pictorial observations. 



These are the chief circumstances, with regard to trees and shrubs, 

 towards which attention ought to be directed, with a view to their pictorial 

 effect, independently of the associations connected with them ; and hence, 

 in giving the history of individual species, it would be necessary to test each 

 by all these different properties, with a view to determining its appi-opriate 

 uses in landscape-gardening, and in ornamental planting. 



Sect. II. Of the Expression and Character of Trees and Shrubs 

 considered pictorially. 



Every object in nature that forms a whole has some expression. If the 

 nature of the object is unknown to the beholder, the expression which he 

 assigns to it is analogous to that of some object with which he is already 

 familiar; and he uses the same terms to describe its appearance as he would 

 apply to such objects. For example, a tall, erect, regularly clothed tree 

 will be described by theepithets stately, nable, or handsome; another kind of 

 tree, with light airy foliage and a wavy stem, will be called graceful ; and so on. 



Character is some circumstance added to expression, which renders it more 

 remarkable ; and the circumstance which has this effect will generally be 

 found to be the accidental exaggeration of some quality belonging to the 

 natural expression of the object. For example, in the case of handsome 

 regularly clothed trees, supposing a number of them standing together, cha- 

 racter would be added to one of them by the extraordinary prolongation and 

 magnitude of one or more of its branches ; or by some of its branches having 

 been taken away, so as to expose a portion of the trunk conspicuously, while 

 the remainder continued clothed. Character would also be added to one 

 tree, among a number of the same kind all previously alike, if a portion of 

 this tree were scathed by lightning ; or if some circumstance were to occur 

 which threw the trunk over to one side. In either of the latter cases, what 

 is called character would be conveyed by the object displaying, conspicuously, 

 something which did not naturally belong to its species ; while, in the for- 

 mer case, character was given by the exaggeration of some quality which 

 was natural to the species. 



The expression of trees may be said to be of two kinds : that which pro- 

 ceeds from their organic influence on the eye as forms, without reference 

 to their nature, and altogether apart from moral associations; and that in 

 which moral associations are the principal cause of the expression. 



Supposing a person to see a tree or shrub for the first time, and to be 

 totally ignorant of its nature ; he could only look upon it in the light of a 

 form ; and, in this case, its expression, to him, would depend upon its re- 

 semblance to forms which he previously knew, whether geometrical figures, 

 or the figures of other objects. Thus* it is, that the first effort which the 

 mind makes to discover beauty in natural forms is, to recognise in them 

 some of the forms of art; and hence, in the infant state of this taste in indi- 

 viduals, the first trees that would be admired would be those the heads of 

 which bore the nearest resemblance to a globe, a cone, or some readily recog- 

 nisable figure. The next step would be the recognition of some artificial 

 figure, in the trees or shrubs of more regular outlines. To this would suc- 

 ceed the recognition of several figures contained within one general figure; 

 and, lastl}^, the recognition, among these several figures, of regularity in their 

 arrangement, or of symmetry in their disposition ; of variety; of intricacy; 

 and, lastly, of harmony and of character. In this way it will be seen, that 

 a tree or a shrub is capable of exciting many ideas of beauty, considered 

 simply as a form, and altogether apart from considerations of usefulness, of 

 botanical interest, or of moral associations. 



A tree, to be regular, or, in other words, to have the expression of regu- 



