CHARACTERISTICS OF TREES. 
287 
lumpish globular types which are commonly admired. But there 
are trees which lose, or never have, symmetry of form, and, like 
some of our other acquaintances, are interesting for their oddi¬ 
ties. Look, for instance, at the accompanying cut of the strag¬ 
gling elm, which is a portrait from nature, and the portrait of 
Parson’s weeping beech, on page 328. The latter is a luxuriant 
mass of pendant branches and foliage, erratic in all directions, and 
yet one of the most interesting of young trees. It is bizarre, 
like the expressions of a wit. Its unlikeness to other trees is 
its superiority; but the exuberant vigor that clothes it with such 
masses of glossy foliage, adds to picturesqueness the constant 
loveableness of beautiful health. Of the trees which by nature 
grow irregularly, the native larch, or hacmatack, is a familiar ex¬ 
ample, its head generally shooting off to one side after it attains a 
certain height. The osage orange is so rambling that it suggests 
a comparison with those eccentric geniuses who, having decided 
talents in many different directions, attempt to follow them all, and 
whose successes or failures are equally interesting to observers. 
Many specimens of the weeping elm, while young, like the wild 
and not unusual form shown by Fig. 76, are 
fine examples of erratic luxuriance, but they 
usually fill up, with age, and finally become 
models of symmetry. Trees are often made 
picturesque by accidents, as the breaking of 
trunks or important branches by summer tor¬ 
nados, or the falling of other trees upon them. 
Fig. 78 is an example from nature of a white 
oak upwards of three feet in diameter, which, 
when young, was bent by the fall of some great tree that rested 
upon it, until all the fibres of its wood had conformed to the forced 
position. Fig. 79 is another sketch from nature of an oak that 
has been robbed of a part of its main trunk, and is picturesque 
in consequence of it. Advantage should always be taken of the 
striking effect of such trees by placing gate-ways or conducting 
walks under them, if practicable ; or, if not, then to make them 
parts of groups in such a way that their picturesqueness may be 
brought into high relief. 
Fig. 77. 
