Whenever transplanted, they should not have their heads or branches lopped, as they recover very slowly from such wounds.

Within Massachusetts, there are found five species of Maple, three of them timber trees; 1, the Red Maple; 2, the White or River Maple, the flowers of both of which appear before the leaves; 3, the Rock Maple or Sugar Maple, whose flowers appear with the leaves; and two tall shrubs or small trees; 4, the Striped Maple, with flowers in pendulous, and 5, the Mountain Maple, with flowers in upright racemes, appearing after the evolution of the leaves.

Sp. 1. THE RED MAPLE. Acer rubrum. L.

Figured, the leaves, in Abbott's Insects, II, Plate 93: in Audubon's Birds, fruit, Vol. I, Plate 54, flowers, I, 67.

The Red Maple, called also the White, the Swamp, the Scarlet, and the Soft Maple, is a tree of middling size, growing abundantly in the swamps and low grounds, in most parts of the State. Its flowers, which appear in April or May, before the leaves, are of a bright crimson or scarlet, and make a striking appearance in whorls or pairs, of sessile, crowded bunches, on the scarlet or purple branches. The flowers are of two or three kinds, found on different trees. They issue from opposite, somewhat quadrangular scale-buds, each bud consisting of several scales, of which the inner ones are more delicate, and containing about 5 flowers. The barren flowers are made of a cup of 8 to 10 or 12 divisions, the outer ones, the sepals, broader, the alternate, inner ones, the petals, narrower, more delicate, and often bending inwards. The stamens are 4 to 5 or 6, twice as long as the sepals, to which they are opposite, and proceeding, with them, from the outer edge of a fleshy, glandular disk. In the perfect, fertile flowers, the calyx and corolla rise from one cup, the sepals broader, external, the petals narrower, alternate, internal, sometimes fringed. The stamens 5, opposite the sepals, short, proceeding from the outer edge of a fleshy disk. The styles are 2, long, diverging, curved, the upper edge a downy stigma. The germs are 2, changing into the united samaræ or keys, with wings resembling those of an insect.

The recent shoots are of a reddish or crimson color, dotted

with brown, and changing gradually into the beautiful clear ashy gray of the trunk. In old trees, the bark cracks and may be easily peeled off in long, slender flakes. The gray, uniform color of the bark is often varied with patches of white lichens, and not uncommonly covered entirely with those of various shades of gray or white, finely dotted with their black or brown. fructification. The leaves, which are plaited in the bud, where they are protected by 4 pairs of leaf-buds, are on long, round petioles, which are usually reddish, and toward autumn of a bright scarlet. They are commonly of 3 or 5 lobes, the notches between the lobes always sharp. They are usually heartshaped, but sometimes straight or rounded at base. They vary exceedingly in size and shape, being sometimes very broad, with 5 palmately divergent lobes, sometimes long and narrow, the lower lobes reduced to mere serratures, and the middle ones prolonged and nearly parallel to the terminal one; the margin slightly and irregularly toothed, or deeply cut into long, slender serratures. The surface is liable to be variegated with lines of scarlet or to become entirely scarlet, or crimson, or orange, at every season of the year. This occasionally happens to all the leaves on a tree, even in the middle of summer, forming a gorgeous contrast with the green of the rest of the forest. The differences in the leaves are accompanied by corresponding differences in the branches and general appearance of the tree; and the common opinion is, that there are several distinct varieties of this tree. The leaves begin to change their color in August, and are usually gone by the first of November.

The observation, for a single year, of the varying colors of the Red Maple, would be sufficient to disprove the common theory that the colors of the leaves in autumn are dependent on the frosts. It is not an uncommon thing to see a single tree in a forest of maples turning to a crimson or scarlet, in July or August, while all the other trees remain green. A single brilliantly colored branch shows itself on a verdant tree; or a few scattered leaves exhibit the tints of October, while all the rest of the tree and wood have the soft greens of June. The sting of an insect, the gnawing of a worm at the pith, or the presence of minute, parasitic plants, often gives the premature colors of

autumn to one or a few leaves. The frost has very little to do with the autumn colors. Some trees are not perceptibly affected by it. The sober browns and dark reds, those of the elms and several of the oaks, may be the gradual effects of continued cold. The brighter colors seem to depend upon other causes. An unusually moist summer, which keeps the cuticle of the forest leaves thin, delicate, and translucent, is followed by an autumn of resplendent colors. A dry summer, by rendering the cuticle hard and thick, makes it opaque, and although the same bright colors may be formed within the substance of the leaf, they are not exhibited to the eye; the fall woods are tame; and the expectation of the rich variety of gaudy colors is disappointed.

The question why our forests are so much more brilliant, in their autumnal livery, than those of corresponding climates and natural families in Europe, cannot, perhaps, be fully answered. It depends, there can be little doubt, on the greater transparency of our atmosphere, and the consequently greater intensity of the light; on the same cause which renders a much larger number of stars visible by night, and which clothes our flowering plants with more numerous flowers, and those of deeper and richer tints; giving somewhat of tropical splendor to our really colder parallels of latitude.

On the first evolution of the leaves in spring, and afterwards when they expand during a series of cloudy days, their color is a delicate yellowish-green, which is supposed to be owing to the green coloring matter within the cells of the leaves, the chromule, or chlorophylle, seen through their white or yellowish membranous coverings. A few hours of sunshine give a visibly deeper tint to the green, which becomes still more intense in the clear and bright sunshine of June and July. This formation. of green is found to be connected with the decomposition of the carbonic acid gas which is taken up in the sap, and the consequent evolution of oxygen, and the deposition of carbon in the vessels of the plant. The color of the chromule is therefore thought to depend upon its greater or less oxygenation;—a free acid, that is, an excess of oxygenation, being sometimes found in the chromule, when it has become yellow or red. Minute portions of iron, carried up by the sap, and deposited in the

vessels of the leaves, may possibly contribute to the depth of the colors, although some of the best physiologists doubt in regard to this.

The Red Maple is usually a low, round-headed tree, of less beauty of shape than either of the other species. But the great variety of rich hues which it assumes, earlier in the fall than any other tree, gives it a conspicuous place in our many-colored autumnal landscape. It sometimes, when growing in rich, wet land, attains to a great height and size, rising to seventy or eighty feet, with a trunk three or four feet in diameter. It has then a very rough bark.

The wood is whitish, with a tint of rose color, of a fine and close grain, compact, firm and smooth, the silver grain lying in layers very narrow and close, and the pores being very small. It is well suited for turning, and takes a fine polish; is easily wrought, and serves for a great variety of purposes. It is much used for common bedsteads, tables, chairs, bureaus and other cheap furniture. In building, it serves well for joists, is an excellent material for flooring, and may be used for any part not exposed to dampness. It lasts well in the flat of a ship's floor. It has sufficient elasticity to serve to be made into oars, which are almost equal to those of white ash. Its defects are want of strength, and its speedy decay when alternately exposed to moisture and dryness.

There are several varieties of the wood, such as the Curled Maple, the Landscape, the Mountain, the Blistered, &c. Curled Maple is the name given to a variety whose longitudinal fibres have a serpentine course, presenting, when sawn lengthwise, a varying succession of light and shade, which has a beautiful effect in cabinet work, imitating the lustre of changeable silk. It is comparatively tough and compact, while it is very light, and is used for gun-stocks and the ornamented handles of utensils. Landscape and Mountain Maple are varieties in color, caused by the irregular change from sap-wood to heart-wood. These are much used for the foot and head-boards of bedsteads, and for pannels of doors to wardrobes, &c. Blistered Maple is a rare variety, resembling the Bird's Eye of the Rock Maple. As fuel, the Red Maple is much used, burning readily and

rapidly when dry, and, for this purpose, it is five eighths as valuable as rock maple, and about half as valuable as hickory. Bancroft says that the bark, when used with an aluminous basis, produces a lasting cinnamon color on wool and on cotton; and with sulphate or acetate of iron, communicates to them a more intense, pure and perfect black than even galls, or any other vegetable substance known to him; and that the leaves produce effects nearly similar to the bark.* Darlington says that the bark affords a dark, purplish blue dye, and makes a pretty good bluish-black ink. For both these purposes, its use is well known in this State. The sap may, like that of the other maples, be boiled down to sugar, but it is only half as rich in saccharine matter as that of the Sugar Maple.

The Red Maple is of rapid growth, young trees increasing in diameter from two fifths to two thirds of an inch in a year,— older ones somewhat less;-the average may be not far from one quarter of an inch. Though it may be made to grow in any land not too dry, it flourishes and attains its largest size only in rich swampy land.

It is found in Canada, and thence, southward to Florida, and westward to the sources of the Oregon.

Sp. 2. THE WHITE MAPLE. Acer dàsycarpum. Ehrenberg. Figured in Michaux, I, 213, Plate 40, and Loudon's Arboretum, V, 39 and 40. Along the sandy or gravelly banks of clear, flowing streams, the White Maple is found all through the middle and western parts of the State. I have not yet found it nearer to Boston than the Ipswich River and the Sudbury River, in Wayland and Sudbury. On the rich meadows on Connecticut River, and on the Nashua at Lancaster, where alone I have found it growing in favorable circumstances, it expands with an ample spread of limb, forming a broad and magnificent, if not a lofty head.

From the red maple, with which it is sometimes confounded, it may be easily distinguished by the silvery whiteness of the under surface of the leaves, and by the color of the spray. The young shoots are of a light green, inclined to yellow, with

* Philosophy of Permanent Colors, II, 272.