They have a very agreeable, slight perfume, especially in the evening, and the whole effect of the tree, when standing singly on a lawn and filled with blossoms, is highly elegant.

When the blossoms disappear, they are followed by the pods, about the fourth of an inch wide, and three or four inches long, containing a few seeds. These ripen in July or August.

This tree is frequently called the Yellow-wood in its native haunts—its heart wood abounding in a fine yellow coloring matter, which, however, is said to be rather difficult to fix, or render permanent. The bark is beautifully smooth, and of a greenish grey color. autumn, the leaves, when they die off, take a lively yellow tint.

In

This tree grows pretty rapidly, and is very agreeable in its form and foliage, even while young. It commences flowering when about ten or fifteen feet high, and we can recommend it with confidence to the amateur of choice trees as worthy of a conspicuous place in the smallest collection.

The only species known is Virgilia lutea. It was first described by Michaux, and was sent to England about the year 1812. Quite the finest planted specimens within our knowledge are growing in some of the old seats in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, where there are several thirty or forty feet in height, and exceedingly beautiful, both in their form and blossoms. A small specimen on our lawn, eighteen feet high, blossoms now very profusely.

THE PAULOWNIA TREE. Paulownia.

Nat. Ord. Scrophulariacea.

Lin. Syst.

The Paulownia is an entirely new ornamental tree, very lately introduced into our gardens and pleasure-grounds from Japan, and is likely to prove hardy here, wherever the Ailantus stands the winter, being naturally from the same soil and climate as that tree. It has already attained a great notoriety in the gardening world of the other continent; and from a cost of four or five guineas a plant, it is now reduced to as many shillings, being very readily propagated. In the north of France it is perfectly hardy, and will no doubt prove equally so here, south of the latitude of Boston. With our own plants being newly received, we have not yet had the opportunity of testing this point.

The Paulownia is remarkable for the large size of its foliage, and the great rapidity of its growth. The largest leaves are more than two feet in diameter, slightly rough or hairy, and serrated on the edges. They are heartshaped, and have been likened to those of the Catalpa, but they perhaps more nearly resemble those of the common sun-flower.

In its growth, this tree, while young, equals or exceeds the Ailantus. In rich soils, near Paris, it has produced shoots, in a single season, 12 or 14 feet in length. After being two or three years planted, it commences yielding its blossoms in panicled clusters. These are bluish lilac, of an open mouthed, tubular form, are very abundantly distributed, and, together with the large foliage, and the robust habit of growth, give this tree a gay and striking

appearance. Its flower buds open during the last of April, or early in May, and have a slight, syringa-like perfume.

The Paulownia, though yet very rare, is easy of propagation by cuttings; and even pieces of the roots grow freely. Should it prove as hardy as (from our fine dry summers for ripening its wood) we confidently anticipate, it will be worthy of a prominent place in every arrangement of choice ornamental trees.

SECTION V.

EVERGREEN ORNAMENTAL

ORNAMENTAL TREES.

The History and Description of all the finest Hardy Evergreen Trees. REMARKS on EFFECTS in LANDSCAPE GARDENING, INDIVIDUALLY AND IN COMPOSITION. Their Cultivation, etc. The Pines. The Firs. The Cedar of Lebanon, and the Deodar Cedar. The Red Cedar. The Arbor Vitæ. The Holly. The Yew, etc.

Beneath the forest's skirt I rest,

Whose branching Pines rise dark and high,

And hear the breezes of the West

Among the threaded foliage sigh.

BRYANT.

THE PINE TREE. Pinus.

Nat. Ord. Coniferæ.

Lin. Syst. Monoecia, Monadelphia.

HE Pines compose by far the most important genus of evergreen trees. In either continent they form the densest and most extensive forests known, and their wood in civil and naval architecture, and for various other purposes, is more generally used than any other. In the United States and the Canadas, there are ten species; in the territory west of the Mississippi to the Pacific, including Mexico, there are fourteen; in Europe fourteen; in Asia, eight, and in Africa, two species. All the colder parts of the old world

-the mountains of Switzerland and the Alps, the shores of the Baltic, vast tracts in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Poland, and Russia, as well as millions of acres in our own country, abound with immense and interminable forests of Pine. Capable of enduring extreme cold, growing on thin soils, and flourishing in an atmosphere, the mean temperature of which is not greater than 37° or 38° Fahrenheit, they are found as far north as latitude 680 in Lapland; while on mountains they grow at a greater elevation than any other arborescent plant. On Mount Blanc, the Pines grow within 2,800 feet of the line of perpetual snow.* In Mexico, also, Humboldt found them higher than any other tree; and Lieut. Glennie describes them as growing in thick forests on the mountain of Popocatapetl, as high as 12, 693 feet, beyond which altitude vegetation ceases entirely.†

The Pines are, most of them, trees of considerable magnitude and lofty growth, varying from 40 to 150 or even 200 feet in height in favorable situations, rising with a perpendicular trunk, which is rarely divided into branches bearing much proportionate size to the main stem, as in most deciduous trees. The branches are much more horizontal than those of the latter class (excepting the Larch). The leaves are linear or needleshaped, and are always found arranged in little parcels of from two to six, the number varying in the different species. The blossoms are produced in spring, and the seeds, borne in cones, are not ripened, in many sorts, until the following autumn. Every part of the stem abounds in a resinous juice, which is extracted, and forms in the

* Edinburgh Phil. Journ.

+ Proc. Geological Soc. Lond. Arb. Brit.