agnitude. With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished
Literary Gentleman. Boston: ---- ---- & Co. 185..

The same camera should be used,--so far as possible,--at a fixed
distance. Our friend, who is giving us so many interesting figures in
his "Trees of America," must not think this Prospectus invades his
province; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, would be a
pretty complement to his larger work, which, so far as published, I
find excellent. If my plan were carried out, and another series of a
dozen English trees photographed on the same scale, the comparison
would be charming.

It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring the life of the
Old and the New World face to face, by an accurate comparison of their
various types of organization. We should begin with man, of course;
institute a large and exact comparison between the development of
_la pianta umana_, as Alfieri called it, in different sections of
each country, in the different callings, at different ages, estimating
height, weight, force by the dynamometer and the spirometer, and
finishing off with a series of typical photographs, giving the
principal national physiognomies. Mr. Hutchinson has given us some
excellent English data to begin with.

Then I would follow this up by contrasting the various parallel forms
of life in the two continents. Our naturalists have often referred to
this incidentally or expressly; but the _animus_ of Nature in the
two half-globes of the planet is so momentous a point of interest to
our race, that it should be made a subject of express and elaborate
study. Go out with me into that walk which we call _the Mall_,
and look at the English and American elms. The American elm is tall,
graceful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if from languor. The
English elm is compact, robust, holds its branches up, and carries its
leaves for weeks longer than our own native tree.

Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides of the ocean,
or not? Nothing but a careful comparison through the whole realm of
life can answer this question.

There is a parallelism without identity in the animal and vegetable
life of the two continents, which favors the task of comparison in an
extraordinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in many ways,
yet not the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just so we
have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting from the same ideal,
embody it with various modificatio