The lines of the hedges are also often marked in many places by trees which, though few or none can be the originals, are descended from the roots or seeds of those trees.
Cedar and locust trees are particularly noticeable.
[Illustration: First page of the Diary for 1760] In 1794 our Farmer had five thousand white thorn sent from England for hedge purposes, but they arrived late in the spring and few survived and even these did not thrive very well.

Another time he sent from Philadelphia two bushels of honey locust seed to be planted in his nursery.

These are only instances of his activities in this direction.
Much of what he undertook as a planter of trees failed for one reason or another, most of all because he attended to the business of his country at the expense of his own, but much that he attempted succeeded and enough still remains to enable us to realize that by his efforts he made his estate attractive.

He was no Barbarian or Philistine.

He had a sense of beauty and it is only in recent years that his countrymen, absorbed in material undertakings, have begun to appreciate the things that he was enjoying so long ago.
"The visitor at Mount Vernon still finds a charm no art alone could give, in trees from various climes, each a witness of the taste that sought, or the love that sent them, in fields which the desolating step of war reverently passed by, in flowers whose root is not in graves, yet tinged with the lifeblood of the heart that cherished them from childhood to old age.