ON FOREST TREES. 
485 
of colour, character, or shape ; yet in all the larger parts , in the 
body and limbs, the resemblance is generally exact. In trees it is 
just the reverse: the smaller parts, the spray, the leaves, the blos¬ 
som, and the seed are the same in all trees of the same kind: while 
the larger parts are wholly different: you never see two oaks with 
an equal number of limbs, the same kind of head, and twisted in the 
same form : and it is from these larger parts, that the most beautiful 
varieties result. * * * * 
Trees when young,—like striplings,—shoot into taper forms: 
there is a lightness, an airiness in them which is pleasing; but they do 
not spread and receive their just proportions, till they have attained 
their full growth. There is as much difference too in trees, (I mean 
in trees of the same kind) in point of beauty, as there is in human 
figures. The limbs of some are set on awkwardly ; their trunks are 
disproportioned, and their whole form is unpleasing. The same rules 
which establish elegance in other objects, establish it in these. There 
must be the same harmony of parts; the same sweeping line ; the 
same contrast; the same ease and freedom. A bough indeed 
may issue from its trunk at right angles, and yet elegantly, as it fre¬ 
quently does in the oak; but it must immediately form some con¬ 
trasting sweep, or the junction will be awkward. 
All forms that are unnatural, displease. A tree lopped into a 
May-pole, as you generally see in the hedgerows of Surrey and some 
other counties, is disgusting. Clipped yews, lime hedges, and pol¬ 
lards, for the same reason are disagreeable; and yet I have sometimes 
seen a pollard produce a good effect, when nature has been suffered 
for some years, to bring it again into form; but I never saw a good 
effect produced by a pollard, on which some single stem was left to 
grow into a tree. The stem is of a different growth; it is dispropor¬ 
tioned ; and always unites awkwardly with the trunk. 
Not only all forms that are unnatural, displease ; but even natural 
forms, when they bear a resemblance to art, unless indeed these forms 
are characteristic of the species ; a cypress pleases in a conic form, 
but if we should see an oak, or an elm growing naturally in that, or 
any other constrained shape, we should take offence. In the cypress, 
nature adapts the spray and branches, to the form of the tree. In 
the oak and elm, the spray and branches produce naturally a different 
character. 
Lightness also is a characteristic of beauty in a tree; for though 
there are beautiful trees of a heavy as well as of a light form; yet 
their extremities must in some parts be separated, and hang with a 
degree of looseness from the middle of the tree, or the whole will 
