I do not remember of ever hearing a word spoken in favor of crooked trees, yet there is something novel, striking and lovely in their peculiar growth and varied outlines, that attracts attention.

Their grotesque forms - sometimes bending over a lake or stream of water, until their moss-covered trunks almost touch the surface; or back in the forest reclining in a half prostrate position with branches nearly reaching the ground; or again, where the bodies, though standing erect, are full of crooks and kinks; here a crotch formed near the ground, and there a cluster of trees growing out from the stump of a broken tree, forming the foundation for such nice rustic seats. Yes, I love crooked trees, because of their odd deformities, for they are original, and not copied.

I often wonder why people who have seen natural forests, persist in planting all straight trees in parks and lawns with the view to imitate nature. It is quite different with trees for the street, for they are on "dress-parade." Street trees should not only be straight, but stand in a straight line, like a regiment of well-drilled soldiers drawn up on review. It is also different with trees planted for mechanical purposes whose prospective value lies in the quality of the timber produced. And in evergreens, whose natural order and beauty is in a straight, symmetrical form.

But, for parks and lawns, where an easy, natural appearance is the object desired, all straight trees with a rigid, set formality, in arranging and planting, is not admissible to good taste in landscape architecture. They are too stiff and formal, void of that easy, graceful variety so essential to good effect. A group of shade trees set just so many feet and inches apart each way, standing like so many telegraph poles on their best behaviour, is a little too "precise" for the present liberal ideas in landscape embellishments.

I love to see groups of trees where the straight and crooked, the elm, the maple, oak, and ash, all growing in irregular order, just as we see them in their native woods, where all apparent restraint and dull formality is thrown off, and where a comfortable seat can be found against a leaning tree, affording both rest and shade. How much nicer it would look in planting trees near the water's edge, to forget man, and imitate the god of the forest, where a number of trees would bend their irregular forms reflecting beautiful shadows in the water, instead of a row of all straight trees, set in such regular order that the first tree met, indexed the form of all the rest.

It is the never ending variety of scenery in our mountains and native forests, that attracts attention, and not the regulation monotony of the plains. In arranging trees for ornament, study to be original, and not to copy. Avoid sameness and practice variety. Denver, Colorado.

[Excellent suggestions; undoubtedly one of the most pleasing drives in Fairmount Park is under the grove of crooked Catalpas. The next interes-ing drive is under a grove of very strait Ailanthuses. Each derives advantage from contrast with the other. - Ed. G. M].