I have said that the North produces no parasol-trees; but it should be remarked that all kinds of trees occasionally approximate to this shape, when they have grown compactly in a forest.  The general shape which they assume under these conditions is what I have termed accidental, because that shape cannot be natural which a growing body is forced to take when cramped in an unnatural or constrained position.  Trees when thus situated become greatly elongated; their shafts are despoiled of the greater part of their lateral branches, and the tree has no expansion until it has made its way above the level of the wood.  The trees that cannot reach this level will in a few years perish; and this is the fate of the greater number in the primitive forest.  But after they have attained this level, they spread out suddenly into a head.  Many such trees are seen in recent clearings; and when their termination is a regular hemisphere of branches and foliage, the tree exhibits a shape nearly approaching that of a parasol.

The Elm, under these circumstances, often acquires a very beautiful shape.  Unlike other trees that send up a single undivided shaft, the Elm, when growing in the forest as well as in the open plain, becomes subdivided into several slightly divergent branches, running up almost perpendicularly until they reach the level of the wood, when they suddenly spread themselves out, and the tree exhibits the parasol shape more nearly even than the Palm.  When one of these forest Elms is left by the woodman, and is seen standing alone in the clearing, it presents to our sight one of the most graceful and beautiful of all arborescent forms.

The rows of Willows, so frequent by the way-side where the road passes over a wet meadow, afford the most common examples of the pollard forms.  Some of these willows, having escaped the periodical trimming of the woodcutter, have become noble standards, emulating the Oak in the sturdy grandeur of their giant arms extending over the road.  Most of them, however, from the repeated cropping which they have suffered, exhibit a round head of long, slender branches, growing out of the extremity of the beheaded trunk.

My remarks thus far relate to trees considered as individual objects; but I must not tire the patience of the reader by extending them farther, though there are many other relations in which they may be treated.  In whatever light we regard them, they will be found to deserve attention as the fairest ornaments of Nature, and as objects that should be held sacred from their importance to our welfare and happiness.  The more we study them, the more desirous are we of their preservation, and the more convinced of the necessity of using some active means to effect this purpose.  He takes but a narrow view of their importance who considers only their value in the economy of animal and vegetable life.  The painter has always made them a particular branch of his study; and the poet