Four Trees 
especially if its tone tends toward golden 
brown — if it is a copper rather than a truly 
purple beech. Indeed, it looks better in 
isolation than in any possible group. It is 
evidently a “specimen” tree, valued be- 
cause of its peculiarities ; and besides, when 
freely developed, it is very symmetrical, 
and where color is abnormal one wants no 
irregularities of form. 
If a purple beech cannot stand alone, and 
yet must be planted, its associates should be 
very carefully chosen. Of course, the best 
will be its own relatives, the green beeches 
— either the English form with its dark 
green, glossy foliage, or the American with 
its lighter foliage, paler bark, and more 
graceful ramifications. Failing these, it 
groups most agreeably with trees which re- 
peat its own lines in a general way, as with 
the scarlet maple, or with those which form 
gentle contrasts, like the elliptical sugar- 
maple. Its effect would be entirely spoiled 
by near neighborhood with the broken, pict- 
uresque outline of a white pine, or the hard, 
conical shape of a spruce. Again, all trees 
which accord well with it in form may not 
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