Tree-planting in The Highway.

Tree-planting in The Highway.

This is frequently recommended by writers on country embellishment, as indispensable to a finished decoration of the farm. Such may, or may not be the fact. Trees shade the roads, when planted on their sides, and so they partially do the fields adjoining, making the first muddy, in bad weather, by preventing the sun drying them, and shading the crops of the last by their overhanging foliage, in the season of their growth. Thus they are an evil, in moist and heavy soils. Yet, in light soils, their shade is grateful to the highway traveler, and not, perhaps, injurious to the crops of the adjoining field; and when of proper kinds, they add grace and beauty to the domain in which they stand. We do not, therefore, indiscriminately recommend them, but leave it to the discretion of the farmer, to decide for himself, having seen estates equally pleasant with, and without trees on the roadside. Nothing, however, can be more beautiful than a clump of trees in a pasture-ground, with a herd, or a flock beneath them, near the road; or the grand and overshadowing branches of stately tree, in a rich meadow, leaning, perhaps, over the highway fence, or flourishing in its solitary grandeur, in the distance - each, and all, imposing features in the rural landscape. All such should be preserved, with the greatest care and solicitude, as among the highest and most attractive ornaments which the farm can boast.

Farm house.