THE PURPLE BEECH. HE large purple beech at Waltham, of which an illustration appears upon finest individuals of in the United States. Downing, who was familiar with the Lyman Place, does not, however, mention it in his "Landscape Gardening," written forty or fifty years ago; and it is probable that the specimen which was growing at that time at Throgg's Neck, in Westchester county, and which Downing declared was the finest in the United States, is now, if still alive, much larger than the Waltham tree, which has lost a good deal from overcrowding and from the garden wall built close to the trunk, which has destroyed the lower branches. There is no tree which demands more room for free development than the beech; and a beech, standing on a lawn or in a garden, on which there are no lower branches to sweep down to the turf, has lost a large part of the characteristic beauty which makes it valuable. The stem of the beech, it is true especially of the American species, has great beauty and'a charm peculiar to itself, but it is in the wood or in the forest that this beauty should be seen and admired; and beeches should not be planted in ornamental grounds where light and space cannot be afforded them for full and unchecked growth in every direction. The purple beech is a tree of much interest apart from its undoubted value for ornamental planting. It is one of the few examples among trees where an abnormal bud variety has retained its character for more than a century, through hundreds of thousands of individuals, all sprung from a single branch (discovered toward the middle of the last century upon a tree in the German forest), either directly from grafts, and now sometimes by seeds; for the plants raised from the seed of a purple-leaved tree preserve more or less constantly this character to a greater or less degree. The seed from certain trees yield more purple-leaved seedlings than those from other trees, although the proportion of the purple-leaved seedlings from the same tree vary in different years, and among purple-leaved seedlings there is always a great variety of shades of color. In other words, a race of purple-leaved beeches is gradually becoming "fixed;" and if it was not in practice more convenient and satisfactory to propagate the best varieties of this tree by grafting, it would doubtless be perfectly possible, at the end of a few generations, to raise from seed, beeches with leaves of almost any shade of purple with as much certainty as different races of the cabbage are obtained from seed. There is no reason to doubt, therefore, that the variety will be as permanent as the type from which it originated. "Garden and Forest," May 8, 1889. Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found, They fall successive, and successive rise. POPE'S Iliad. H BOAT SONG. THE EVER-GREEN PINE. AIL to the Chief who in triumph advances! Earth send it sap anew, Gayly to bourgeon and broadly to grow, Sends our shout back again, Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain, When the whirlwind has stripped every leaf on the mountain, Moored in the rifted rock, Proof to the tempest's shock, Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow; Echo his praise again, "Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!'' |