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 writer’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 woods 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 peculiar 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 likes it and wants it, and every- 
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