rears those minute wonders of her skill, the flowers and smaller plants that will flourish only under their protection, and those insect hosts that charm the student with their beauty and excite his wonder by their mysterious instincts.  Science, too, has built an altar under the trees, and delivers thence new oracles of wisdom, teaching man how they are mysteriously wedded to the clouds, and are thus made the blessed instruments of their beneficence to the earth.

Not without reason did the ancients place the Naiad and her fountain in the shady arbor of trees, whose foliage gathers the waters of heaven into her fount and preserves them from dissipation.  From their dripping shades she distributes the waters, which she has garnered from the skies, over the plain and the valley:  and the husbandman, before he has learned the marvels of science, worships the beneficent Naiad, who draws the waters of her fountain from heaven, and from her sanctuary in the groves showers them upon the arid glebe and adds new verdure to the plain.  After science has explained to us the law by which these supplies of moisture are furnished by the trees, we still worship the beneficent Naiad:  we would not remove the drapery of foliage that protects her fountain, nor drive her into exile by the destruction of the trees, through whose leaves she holds mysterious commerce with the skies and saves our fields from drought.

It is in these relations, leaving their uses in economy and the arts untouched, that I would now speak of trees.  I would consider them as they appear to the poet and the painter, as they are connected with scenery, and with the romance and mythology of Nature, and as serving the purposes of religion and virtue, of freedom and happiness, of poetry and science, as well as those of mere taste and economy.  I am persuaded that trees are closely connected with the fate of nations, that they are the props of industry and civilization, and that in all countries from which the forests have disappeared the people have sunk into indolence and servitude.

Though we may not be close observers of Nature, we cannot fail to have remarked that there is an infinite variety in the forms of trees, as well as in their habits.  By those who have observed them as landscape ornaments, trees have been classified according to their shape and manner of growth.  They are round-headed or hemispherical, like the Oak and the Plane; pyramidal, like the Pine and the Fir; obeliscal, like the Arbor-Vitae and Lombardy Poplar; drooping, like the White Elm and the Weeping Willow; and umbrella-shaped, like the Palm.  These are the natural or normal varieties in the forms of trees.  There are others which may be considered accidental:  such are the tall and irregularly shaped trees which have been cramped by growing in a dense forest that does not permit the extension of their lateral branches; such also are the pollards which have been repeatedly cut down or dwarfed by the axe of the woodman.