Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 | Page 6

in open space. Such is the scenery of considerable portions of
the Atlantic States, both North and South. These varied assemblages of
wood and shrubbery are the characteristic features of the landscape in
the older villages of New England, and indeed of all the States that
were established before the Revolution. But the New-England system
of farming--so much abhorred by those who wish to bring agriculture
to such a state of improvement as shall make it profitable exclusively to
capitalists--has been more favorable to the sylvan beauty of the
landscape than that of any other part of the continent. At the South,
especially, where agriculture is carried on in large plantations, we see
wide fields of tillage, and forest groups of corresponding size. But the
small and independent farming of New England--as favorable to
general happiness as it is to beautiful scenery--has produced a charming
variety of wood, pasture, and tillage, so agreeably intermixed that one
is never weary of looking upon it. The varied surface of the landscape,
in the uneven parts which are not mountainous, has increased these
advantages, producing an endless multitude of those limited views
which may be termed picturesque.
In no other part of the country are the minor inequalities of surface so
frequent as in New England: I allude to that sort of ruggedness which is
unfavorable to any "mammoth" system of agriculture, and plainly
evinces that Nature and Providence have designed this part of the
country for free and independent labor. Here little meadows, of a few
acres in extent, are common, encircled by green pasture hills or by
wood. A rolling surface is more favorable to grandeur of scenery; but
nothing is more beautiful than landscape formed by hills rising
suddenly out of perfect levels. As it is not my present purpose to treat

of landscape in general, I will simply remark that the barrenness of a
great part of the soil of the Eastern States is favorable to picturesque
scenery. This may seem a paradoxical assertion to those who can see no
beauty except in universal fatness; but unvaried luxuriance is fatal to
variety of scenes, though it undoubtedly encourages the development of
individual growth. An agreeable intermixture of various sylvan
assemblages is one of the effects of a barren soil, containing numerous
fertile tracts. Not having in general sufficient strength to produce
timber, it covers itself with diverse groups of vegetation, corresponding
with the varieties of soil and surface. Thus, in a certain degree, we are
obliged to confess that beauty springs out of Nature's deficiencies.
We live in a latitude and upon a soil, therefore, which are favorable to
the harmonious grouping of vegetation. As we proceed southward, we
witness a constant increase of the number of species gathered together
in a single group. Nature is more addicted at the North to the habit of
classifying her productions and of assembling them in uniform
phalanxes. The painter, on this account, finds more to interest the eye
and to employ his pencil in the picturesque regions of frost and snow;
while the botanist finds more to exercise his observation in the crowded
variety that marks the region of perpetual summer.
But while vegetation is more generally social in high latitudes, several
families of Northern trees are entirely wanting in this quality. Seldom is
a forest composed chiefly of Elms, Locusts, or Willows. Oaks and
Birches are associated in forests, Elms in groves, and Willows in small
groups following the courses of streams. Those Northern trees which
are most eminently social, including the two just named, are the Beech,
the Maple, the Hickory, the coniferous trees, and some others; and by
the predominance of any one kind the character of the soil may be
partially determined. There is no tree that grows so abundantly in miry
land, both North and South upon this continent, as the Red Maple. It
occupies immense tracts of morass in the Middle States, and is the last
tree which is found in swamps, according to Michaux, as the Birch is
the last we meet in ascending mountains. The Sugar-Maple is confined
mostly to the Northeastern parts of the continent. Poplars are not
generally associated exclusively in forests; but at the point where the
Ohio and the Mississippi mingle their waters are grand forests of
Deltoid Poplars, that stamp upon the features of that region a very

peculiar physiognomy.
The characteristics of different woods, composed chiefly of one family
of trees, would make an interesting study; but it would be tiresome to
enter minutely into their details. Some are distinguished by a
superfluity, others by a deficiency of undergrowth. In general, Pine and
Fir woods are of the latter description, differing in this respect from
deciduous woods. These differences are most apparent in large
assemblages of wood, which have