he noble American linden, one of the really great trees of our forests,
bears these delicate whitish flowers, held in rich clusters from a
single stem which is attached for part of its length to a curious long
green bract. If these flowers came naked on the tree, as do those of the
Norway maple, for instance, they would be easily seen and admired of
men, but being withheld until the splendid heart-shaped foliage is well
out, the blooms miss the casual eye. But the bees see them; they know
the linden for their own, and great stores of sweetest honey follow a
year when abundant pasture of these flowers is available.

[Illustration: Flowers of the American linden]

A kindly tree is this linden, or lime, or basswood, to give it all its
common names. Kindly as well as stately, but never rugged as the oak, or
of obvious pliant strength as the hickory. The old tree invites to shade
under its limbs crowded with broad leaves; the young tree is lusty of
growth and clean of bark, a model of rounded beauty and a fine variant
from the overworked maples of our streets.

Again, the tale of woe! for the great lindens of our forests are nearly
all gone. Too useful for timber; too easy to fell; its soft, smooth,
even wood too adaptable to many uses! Cut them all; strip the bark for
"bast," or tying material; America is widening; the sawmills cannot be
idle; scientific and decent forestry, so successful and so usual in
Europe, is yet but a dream for future generations here in America!

But other lindens, those of Europe especially, are loved of the
landscape architect and the Germans. "Unter den Linden," Berlin's famous
street, owes its name, fame and shade to the handsome European species,
the white-lined leaves of which turn up in the faintest breeze, to show
silvery against the deep green of their upper surfaces. Very many of
these fine lindens are being planted now in America by landscape
architects, and there are some lindens on Long Island just as prim and
trim as any in Berlin. Indeed, there is a sort of German "offiziere"
waxed-mustache air of superiority about them, anyway!

[Illustration: The American linden]

There is an all-pervading Middle States tree that I might give a common
name to as the "fence-post tree," because it is so often grown for that
use only, by reason of its enduring timber and its exceeding vigor under
hard usage. Yet the common black locust is one of the most distinct and
pleasing American trees of mod