The woods and by-ways of New England . ays itcovers the nakedness of the stone wall with foliage andflowers, and produces an abundance of wild fruit forchildren and birds. Tons of whortleberries would beproduced every summer by rustic waysides and the bor-ders of fields, if the sordid land-owner did not destroy thebushes that yield them. I cannot see that a growth ofthis kind close to the fences would diminish the space that 84 WAYSIDE SHRUBBERY. should be occupied by the farmers crops. Yet were itnot for the persistent efforts of Nature, who plants hershrubs with liberal hand in neglected fie
The woods and by-ways of New England . ays itcovers the nakedness of the stone wall with foliage andflowers, and produces an abundance of wild fruit forchildren and birds. Tons of whortleberries would beproduced every summer by rustic waysides and the bor-ders of fields, if the sordid land-owner did not destroy thebushes that yield them. I cannot see that a growth ofthis kind close to the fences would diminish the space that 84 WAYSIDE SHRUBBERY. should be occupied by the farmers crops. Yet were itnot for the persistent efforts of Nature, who plants hershrubs with liberal hand in neglected fields and borders,they would long since have been exterminated in allour old townships. It is true that they do not yieldany immediate profit to the farmer; but they producefruit which is a luxury to the children of the neighbor-hood ; they are valuable for the shelter they afford to thebirds; they protect the immediate grounds from thewinds, even more than trees ; and they constitute the mostinteresting embellishments of a rustic THE AMERICAN ELM. I will confess that I join in the admiration so gen-erally bestowed upon the American Elm. To me no othertree seems so beautiful or so majestic. It does notexhibit the sturdy ruggedness of the oak; it is not soevidently defiant of wind and tempest. It seems, indeed,to make no outward pretensions of strength. It bends tothe breeze which the oak defies, and is more seldom, there-fore, broken by the wind. The Elm is especially the way-side tree of New England, and it forms the most remark-able feature of our domestic landscape. If there be inany other section of our land as many, they are individu-als mingled with the forest, and are not so frequent by theroadsides. In this part of the country the Elm has beenplanted and cherished from the earliest period of our his-tory, and the inhabitants have always looked upon it withadmiration, and valued it as a landscape ornament aboveevery other species. It is the most drooping of the droo
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Keywords: ., bookauthorflaggwil, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookyear1872
