The oak of England and the pine of Norway are not more typical than the tulip-tree.  The symmetry, vigor, and rich colors of our tree might represent the force, freedom, and beauty of our government and our social influences.  If the American eagle is the bird of freedom, the tulip is the tree of liberty,—­strong, fragrant, giant-flowered, flaunting, defiant, yet dignified and steadfast.

A very intelligent old man, who in his youth was a great bear- and panther-hunter, has often told me how the black bear and the tawny catamount used to choose the ample “forks” of the tulip-tree for their retreats when pursued by his dogs.  The raccoon has superseded the larger game, and it was but a few weeks ago that I found one lying, like a striped, fluffy ball of fur, in a crotch ninety feet above ground.  “Our white-wood” lumber has grown so valuable that no land-owner will allow the trees to be cut by the hunter, and hence the old-fashioned ’coon-hunt has fallen among the things of the past, for it seems that the ’coon is quite wise enough to choose for the place of his indwelling the costliest tulip of the woods.  I have already casually mentioned the fact that the tulip-tree’s bloom is scarcely known to exist by even intelligent and well-informed Americans.  Every one has heard of the mimosa, the dogwood, the red-bud, and the magnolia, but not of the tulip-bearing tree, with its incomparably bold, dashing, giantesque flower, once so common in the great woods of our Western and Middle States.  I have not been able to formulate a good reason for this.  Every one whose attention is called to the flower at once goes into raptures over its wild beauty and force of coloring, and wonders why poems have not been written about it and legends built upon it.  It is a grander bloom than that which once, under the same name, nearly bankrupted kingdoms, though it cannot be kept in pots and greenhouses.  Its colors are, like the idiosyncrasies of genius, as inimitable as they are fascinating and elusive.  Audubon was something of an artist, but his tulip-blooms are utter failures.  He could color an oriole, but not the corolla of this queen of the woods.  The most sympathetic and experienced water-colorist will find himself at fault with those amber-rose, orange-vermilion blushes, and those tender cloudings of yellow and green.  The stiff yet sensitive and fragile petals, the transparent sepals, with their watery shades and delicate washing of olive-green, the strong stamens and peculiarly marked central cone, are scarcely less difficult.  All the colors elude and mock the eager artist.  While the gamut of promising tints is being run, he looks, and, lo! the grand tulip has shrivelled and faded.  Again and again a fresh spray is fetched in, but when the blooming-season is over he is still balked and dissatisfied.  The wild, Diana-like purity and the half-savage, half-aesthetic grace have not wholly escaped him, but the color,—­ah I there is the disappointment.