He also writes : " Nor can much be said of that class of horticultural productions known as weeping trees".

I differ with him in this opinion, for I think much can be said. The broad cathedral form of my Weeping Beech, 50 feet high and 50 feet broad, with a living house for its interior, always excites the admiration of visitors. My Weeping Sophora is a graceful feathery mass of the softest foliage, which always charms, and its moonlight shadows are very beautiful.

The Weeping Hemlock is like an evergreen fountain, and exceptionally graceful. The Weeping Silver Fir and the Weeping Norway Spruce, have each their own merits, and give that variety of form which, with variety of color, make the picturesque lawn which all admire.

I would not be unjust to the writer, for he evidently has a very good opinion of nature when he thus writes:

"Nature is very indulgent, and permits the horticulturist to mould and shape her works into various forms. The perpetuation of these monstrosities and vagaries, is no credit to those who pander to the false taste which encourages such productions".

Now I ought to feel very badly at this denunciation, for I have been doing that thing for forty years. I do not, however, suffer much, because I have an idea that nature, not I, made these forms and colors, and that I honor her by copying and perpetuating her work.

If I should feel very badly, however, I will think of Alfred Parsons and other eminent artists, who, whenever they visit my grounds, sketch gladly the Weeping Larch with its weird and picturesque beauty.

I may fairly conclude this part of my criticism with an anecdote of that eccentric artist, Whistler, in reply to an admirer who said: "I see you everywhere in nature." " Yes," said the artist, "nature is very apt; she shows a decided improvement since I took her up." Our writer does not quite take her up; he only proposes to send her works to the rubbish heap. I prefer to perpetuate them.

The article in the Tribune is, perhaps, the more dangerous, because it speaks correctly of many things, except form and color. So it was that the author of the moon hoax, forty years ago, made people believe the things they did not know, by the correctness of his description of the things they did know.

The writer's allusion to the work of Mr. Sargent is very just. It is rarely more than once in a generation, that a man arises with physical vigor, trained mental ability, abiding enthusiasm and the leisure that wealth gives, all devoted to arboriculture. The possession of these qualities is enabling Mr. Sargent to do a work, the full value of which cannot now be estimated, but will be more and more appreciated as the years roll on.

The writer in the Tribune states that foreign trees will not succeed as well in this country as native trees. If all that is not American is foreign, the comparison is scarcely a just one, for all American trees do not succeed well in all America. The trees of the Pacific do not flourish on the Atlantic Coast, and the converse is also true. Prof. Gray tells us, that out of 66 genera and 155 species found in the forests east of the Rocky Mountains, only 31 genera and 78 species are found west of the mountains. There are wanting on the Pacific the Magnolias, Tulip trees, Plane trees, etc., which were found existing in the miocene age in Switzerland, and are now found in the United States.

There is much to sustain the theory that Europe and America were once connected by a continent which was the cradle of the human race. If so, the trees were, doubtless, interchangeably the same, showing only certain distinctions which by long culture become fixed, and, reproducing themselves from seed, were recognized as species. The difference between existing American and European Beeches, Oaks, Lindens, Larches, and many other trees, is not greater than between the European Purple and Weeping Beeches, the English Purple and Golden Oaks, the common and the Silver Linden, the common and .the Weeping Larch, and numerous others which the connoisseur in trees will remember. In American Oaks, Willows, Poplars, Hemlocks, Spruces, Pines, etc., there is also greater distinction than between European and American trees of the same families.

There seems to me, therefore, no reason in making a distinction between European and American trees for ornamental planting. The Norway Spruce, Nordmann Fir, Austrian Pine and other European conifers, become unsightly after twenty-five years, and are fit only only for destruction. So are the American Hemlocks, except in hedges, and White Spruce and Larch and other trees. So far as American experience in the vicinity of New York yet goes, the Oriental Spruce is the only European conifer which grows more beautiful as it grows older. Among American conifers only the White Pine becomes a stately tree, but its brittle wood makes it liable to destruction by an ordinary ice storm. Those who wish to enjoy conifers can be safe with them for fifteen or twenty years, which is certainly better than Coleus for three months.

It would be much more reasonable to make the distinction lie between the different parts of the United States, where the differences in soil and climate are greater than between Europe and America in the same latitude. Natives of the soil and climate of Massachusetts, may do better there than trees from Kentucky and Illinois, and thus through the whole range of trees and states.

The writer uses the Lombardy Poplar and the Weeping Willow, as illustrations of the worthless-ness of European trees. Our own Poplars and Willows are certainly of less value, while none of them can supply the place of the former for certain effects, which all landscape artists recognize.

In matters of taste, every man is fairly entitled to his own opinion; but he is not entitled to stamp as untrue, a world-wide recognition of beauty.

Thus the Tribune writer says, in alluding to the admiration for unusual colors and shapes : "To meet the demands springing from such notions, nurserymen have been driven to raise and sell so many trees whose sole merit is that they are purple, or golden, or silvery, or ring-streaked and speckled, or that they can be warranted to grow straight downward and never get an inch higher than the stock on which they are grafted, or to grow straight upward and as sharply conical as a church spire. Fortunately, no eye has been horrified at the spectacle of a wood full of these monstrosities".