CHAPTER I. 
A COMPARISON OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TREES. 
“ I care not how men trace their ancestry, 
To Ape or Adam; let them please their whim; 
But I in June am midway to believe 
A Tree among my far progenitors ; 
Such sympathy is mine with all the race. 
Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet 
There is between us. Surely there are times 
When they consent to own me of their kin. 
And condescend to me, and call me cousin, 
Murmuring faint lullabies of eldest time 
Forgotten, and yet dumbly felt with thrills 
Moving the lips, though fruitless of the words.” 
Lowell. 
W HEN one reflects that among all the millions of 
human beings that have existed no two have been 
alike, and that all their illimitable varieties of ex¬ 
pression are produced by the varied combinations of 
only half a dozen features, within a space of six inches by eight, it 
ought not to be difficult to conceive the endless diversity of char¬ 
acter that may be exhibited among trees, with their multitude of 
features and forms, their oddities of bark, limb, and twig, their 
infinitude of leaves and blossoms of all sizes, forms, and shades of 
color, their towering sky outlines, and their ever-varying lights and 
shadows. There are subtle expressions in trees, as in the human 
face, that it is difficult to analyze or account for. A face, no one 
feature of which is pleasing, often charms us by the expression of 
an inward spirit which lights it May we not claim for all living 
nature, as our great poet Bryant suggests in the following lines, a 
