ON FOREST TREES. 
149 
Whether these maladies in trees ever produce beauty in adorned 
nature, I much doubt. Kent was hardy enough to plant a withered 
tree ; but the error was too glaring for imitation. 
Objects in every mode of composition, should harmonise; and all 
we venture to assert is, that these maladies are their only sources of 
beauty, either in their wild scenes of nature, or in artificial land¬ 
scape, when they are the appendages of some particular mode of 
composition. 
The mose beautiful of these diseases, is moss, —the green which 
tinges the trunk of the beech ; the sulphur colored, and black, which 
stain the oak ; and the yellow, which is frequently found on the ash, 
and elm, are amongst the most beautiful of those tints that embellish 
the bark of trees. There is too, a white moss, which is considered a 
certain mark of age ; and when it prevails in any degree, is a clear 
indication that the tree is declining. We find also another species 
of moss of a dark brown colour; another of an ashy hue; and another 
of dingy yellow ; touches of red, and sometimes, though rarely,—a 
bright yellow, like a gleam of sunshine ; many of these, however, 
are lichins and liverworts; but all these excrescences, under whatever 
names distinguished, add great beauty to trees, and when they are 
blended harmoniously, as is generally the case, the rough and fur¬ 
rowed trunk of an old oak, adorned with these pleasing appendages, 
is an object that will long detain the picturesque eye. 
The blasted tree has often a fine effect, both in natural and arti¬ 
ficial landscape. When a dreary heath is spread before the eye, and 
ideas of wildness and desolation are required, what more suitable 
accompaniment can be imagined, than the blasted oak,—ragged,— 
scathed,—and leafless,—shooting its peeled white branches athwart 
the gathering blackness of some rising storm P Thus the poet treats it, 
£< As when Heaven’s fire 
Hath scath’d the forest oak, or mountain pine, 
With singed top, its stately growth, tho’ bare, 
Stands on the blasted heath.” 
Ivy, and other parasitical plants,—climbers, and other appendages, 
are beautifully described, and he proceeds thus:— 
“ The rooting of trees also, is a circumstance on which their great 
beauty depends ; old trees often leave their roots above the soil; and 
the effect is certainly very picturesque. The more they raise the soil 
around them, and the greater the number of radical knobs they heave 
up, the firmer they seem to establish their footing upon the earth, 
and the more dignity they assume. An old tree rising tamely from 
a smooth surface, (as we often find it covered with earth in artificial 
