LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

SANTA BARBARA

PRESENTED BY

MRS. MAC KINLEY HELM

/

7

THE TREES OF OLD ENGLAND.

THE

TREES OF OLD ENGLAND:

SKETCHES OF THE

ASPECTS, ASSOCIATIONS, AND USES OF THOSE WHICH

CONSTITUTE THE FOBESTS, AND GIVE EFFECT TO

THE SCENERY OF OUR NATIVE COUNTRY.

LEO H. GRINDON,

Lecturer on Botany at the Royal School of Medicine, Manchester.

Author of "Life: its Nature, Varieties, and Phenomena;" "British and

Garden Botany;" " The Little Things of Nature;" "Echoes

in Plant and Flower Life," &c., &c.

SECOND EDITION.-REVISED AND ENLARGED.

LONDON :

F. PITMAN, 20, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.
1870.

F. PITMAN,

•20, PATERNOSTER Row,
LONDON, E.G.

PREFACE TO FIEST EDITION.

THE following chapters appeared originally in a
Magazine which has for its chief aim the diffusion
of moral and sacred truth, and is always glad to
have this done through the medium of illustrations
drawn from NATUEE, — that second Book of God,
which is everywhere a commentary upon the first
and greatest. They make not the slightest preten-
sion to a scientific character, seeking, like their
forerunners on the " Little Things of Nature," sim-
ply to set forth, in a plain and easy manner, some
few of the beautiful and refreshing truths connected
with the foresters of Old England. If received in
the kindly spirit which it is hoped they may aid in
diffusing and encouraging, they may probably be
followed by a second series.

ADVERTISEMENT TO SECOND EDITION.

THIS Edition has been carefully corrected, and
much new matter has been introduced, having
reference to the economic uses of trees and their
products. The additions of wood-cut portraits of
the trees described, will assist also, it is hoped, in
giving the book new value.

RUMFOED STEEET, MANCHESTER,
1870.

CONTENTS.

General Qualities and Recommendations of Trees . 1

Structure of Trees 6

The Oak 11

The Pine 35

The Beech 55

The Elm 70

The Lime 85

The Poplar and the Willow 103

The Tew 121

The Maple and the Sycamore 130

The Birch and the Alder 144

The Ash-tree 159

The Mountain-ash 171

The Chestnut .172

Summary of smaller Trees 175

Cms at (ftftr (Englonir.

TREES constitute an order of nobility ; for nature
has its aristocracy as well as mankind. If there be
" ancient and noble " families in a nation or a com-
munity, still older, and inheriting yet more dignity,
are the families of living things by which man is
encircled. He can claim no honour on the score of
descent or genealogy that is not already merited by
some patrician of the world of plants ; and this not
so much because trees are the same to-day that
they were in the beginning, as by reason of their
absolute excellence, their serene and invulnerable
perfection.

Trees are sanitary agents in the economy of the
world we live in. By the process of " assimilation/'
which means the abstraction of carbon from the
atmosphere, in order that, in due time, and through
certain vital processes, it may be converted into wood
and other vegetable substances, — by the process of
" assimilation," we say, trees, through the medium
of their leaves, preserve the air in a condition fit
for breathing. Herbaceous vegetation contributes
to this great end ; but the result is mainly referable

2 VALUE OP TREES.

to arborescent plants, their extent of leaf-surface
being so prodigious, when compared with that of
the former kind. We little think when we inhale
the fresh air, and quaff it upon the hills, like so
much invisible wine, that its purity and healthful-
ness come of the glorious trees. But so it is. Nor
have we merely the trees of our own country to
think of and be thankful for. The air we breathe
in England to-day has been purified perhaps a
thousand miles away. If the wind blow from the
north, we may be thankful to the Scandinavian
birches ; if from the west, it is quite possible that
the magnolias of North America may have helped
to strain it ; if from the south, were it gifted with
language, we might hear news from the orange
groves. Every tree in nature makes itself felt in
the good it does the air, — a beautiful return for the
new loveliness it receives when its branches and
foliage are stirred and fluttered by the breeze.

Trees supply man with every species of useful
article, whether of nourishment, or of material for
clothing, or of medicine j and with timber whereof
to construct dwellings and to build ships, so that
even the sea shall be a highway. Not that any
single kind is of utility so multiform. Fruits are
supplied by some, as the olive and the fig, the coco-
nut and the date ; the inner bark of the paper mul-
berry furnishes the inhabitants of the South Sea
Islands with materials for their simple apparel ;

TEEES AND THE ^PICTURESQUE. 3

medicines are afforded by innumerable species, and
" wood" and " tree" are words almost synonymous.
It would be foolish and presumptuous to say that
man could not exist without trees, since, were
'here no such productions in existence, the Infinite
Benevolence would supply his wants through some
other medium. But constituted as man is, and
established as trees and their functions and pro-
perties are, it is plain that the present order and
harmony of things in respect to man's welfare, are
inseparably identified with trees. Thus, that when
we consider man and his privileges, the amenities and
the enjoyments that embosom life, the comforts and
the ornaments of his home, we cannot possibly do
so, if we would give all things their fair place, with-
out keeping trees also constantly before the mind.

Trees are indispensable to the picturesque. A
mountain, or an extended plain, may have grandeur,
though devoid of trees ; and it is easy to conceive
of richly cultivated valleys covered with crops of
corn, or unrolling infinite reaches of green pasture,
and at the same time without a tree, except a little
one here and there, just sufficient to serve as a land-
mark. But in the absence of trees, none of these
places could be picturesque, in the full and proper
sense of the word. The trees break the outlines ;
they give variety of colours, movement also, and
shadows, and touch the imagination with an agree-
able sense of fruitfulness ; or if they be timber and

B 2

4 TANGUAGE OF TREES.

forest-trees, with the idea of nobleness. They are
to the landscape what living and moving people are
to the street, or to the interior of the hall or temple
— an element that may be dispensed with, but at
the expense of the finest and most impressive in-
fluences. We may be overpowered by the stern
grandeur of a treeless waste, especially if it be
composed of mountains ; and the sensation is one
that gives a variety not unacceptable to our experi-
ences of external nature; but the scenes which
come home most closely to our sympathies, and that
maintain a perennial hold, are those which are
enriched by the abundance of their trees.

Poetry finds in trees no little of its sustenance.
From the most ancient poets downwards, all verses
that have immortality in them, abound more or less
with allusions to trees, finding in them either
images for the events — both glad and sorrowful — of
human life, or emblems, in their higher nature, of
what pertains to the heart and mind. The " Lan-
guage of Flowers" would be incomplete did it not
include the " Language of Trees," since trees are
adapted, by their original and inalienable constitu-
tion, to serve as metaphors for everything good and
wise in human nature. Hence the countless cita-
tions of trees in Holy Writ, wherein the cedar and
the fir, the vine and the olive, the palm and the
fig, are a portion of the ordinary vocabulary — not
mentioned arbitrarily, or as a sportive act of the

TREES AND THE GROWTH OP THE MIND. 5

fancy, but on account of their being the absolute
representatives and pictured forms in the temporal
world of the high and sacred realities which
belong to the eternal.

Because of these admirable attributes and cha-
racters of trees, we propose in this series of papers
to examine somewhat closely into their nature and
life-history, marking out the features and physio-
gnomy of such kinds as belong to our own island, and
inquiring into the specialities which give them their
several places in art and poetry. For a tree is not
merely an oak, or an ash, or an elm. It has quali-
ties for the imagination and the heart, moving men
in its own way, and vindicating prerogatives that
are peculiar to it. The mind of the man who in
his youth was accustomed to contemplate . oaks,
grows up very differently from that of one whose
boyhood was spent near pines and firs. Where
evergreen trees prevail, and are a daily spectacle, a
very different frame of mind is induced compared
with that which exists where the branches are leaf-
less throughout the winter. As the stars and planets,
from the inaccessible altitude of their sweet lustre,
make the heart great by the contemplation of them ;
so, after the same manner, imposing and magni-
ficent trees, whose branches, when we go beneath,
seem the clouds of a green heaven, have power to
ennoble and elevate the soul, such as all who have
lived among them are more or less clearly con-

6 STRUCTURE OP THE STEMS OF TREES.

scious of, and which is totally unpossessed by small
ones.

In England, the trees are all of the class called
" exogenous/' that is to say, they have numerous
and spreading branches; the leaves, when held
between the eye and the light, are found, if broad
enough, to be marked in every portion by net-work
of green lines, technically called the "veins;"
and upon the outside of the trunk there is bark,
which can be removed like the peel of an orange.
When one of these exogenous or branching trees
is cut down, or if a branch be lopped off, the exposed
end, on being polished, shows concentric circles
surrounding a central point, which in young parts
of the tree indicates a column of living pith. The
concentric circles announce the age of the tree or
branch, which usually is just as many years old in
that part as there are rings. In its earliest stage,
or while in its first season of growth, the stem of

SECTION OF EXOGENOUS STEM.

the seedling tree consists only of pith and an en-

GROWTH OF THE WOOD AND BARK. 7

closing skin. Woody matter is gradually prepared,
and this becomes deposited in a layer between the
pith and the skin, which latter now acquires the
solidity of bark; and should the stem be cut
through at Christmas, or at the end of its first year,
the first of these annual rings will be plainly visible.
Every successive year the process is repeated.
With the opening of the leaves in spring (for it is
the leaves which really effect the work) the pre-
paration and deposit of a new layer of wood is com-
menced, so that by the close of the second season
there are two layers; by the close of the third
season, three layers ; and so on as long as the vital
lease of the tree endures. The bark is simultane-
ously renewed, enclosing a larger mass every year.
The process is illustrated in the spreading of the
little wave-circles upon the surface of still water.
Standing on the margin of a lake or mere, and
looking at the sky and clouds reflected in its bosom,
how often the fairy spectacle is broken by the wing
of some light bird that, skimming through the air,
just touches the surface and sweeps onward. But
the effect of that touch is to cause circle after circle
of tiny wavelets to move away from the spot where
the touch was given, and as far as the eye can reach,
the beautiful phenomenon is continued. Just like
this succession of wave-circles is that of the annual
wood-circles of a tree, only that on the water we
have but an evanescent effect, while in the tree

0 ENDOGENOUS TEEES.

there is new substance and solidity. The mode of
growth and the phenomena referred to are denoted
by this word "exogenous/' which is literally no
more than " expansion outwards/'

Very different are the mode of growth and the
internal condition of the trees called " endogenous."
These show no distinction of bark and wood and
pith; they are destitute of branches (except in a
few instances); and their leaves, which are incon-
ceivably immense to any one who has never seen
leaves larger than those of English trees, are pro-
duced only upon the summit of the stem. They are
chiefly represented in the illustrious tropical pro-
ductions known as palm-trees — those soul-moving
emblems of the south and east, and in England are
only seen in large and costly conservatories, where
room can be afforded them to lift their green pride
on high. Even then we only see them as juveniles,
no possible structure of glass being competent to
shelter palms when full-grown, except in the case of
some of the dwarf kinds.

It is among the exogenous trees, accordingly,
that in England we find our delight. It is these
which form the sweet and solitary arcades of the
forest ; that are the homes or the resting-places of
the birds; that shelter us from the storm, and
temper the heat of the sun ; whose trunks are em-
bossed with tender creepers of green moss, or hidden
by the activity of the innumerable and ubiquitous

LONGEVITY OF TREES.

ivy ; — it is these that are so lovely in their youth,
so venerable in their old age ; these that stand still
in quiet dignity while we talk of four-score as a
wonderful life-time, and for their own part, watch
the rise and fall even of nations. For the nature
of an exogenous tree being to expand and enlarge
externally, there is of course no physical limit to
the diameter it may attain, or to the number and
massiveness of its boughs and branches, or to the
multiplication of its twigs and leaves ; and should
the lease of life allowed it in the Divine economy
be considerable, as happens with certain kinds of
mimosa, and with many trees of the pine and cedar
kind, it may go on growing and enlarging for ages,
and after a thousand years be still in the full vigour
of its existence. Hence it is that the scriptural
image acquires such force — " As the days of a tree
are the days of my people." Hundreds of trees are
standing at this moment in America, some in Cali-
fornia, others in Brazil, that were alive when those
words were written, and with a grasp upon life and
the earth which seems to assure them a period of
which they have perhaps no more than passed the me-
ridian. England possesses multitudes of endogenous
plants, though no endogenous trees. Lilies, grasses,
rushes, are all structurally of the same nature as the
palm-trees, and now and then they give us a proto- .
type of the palm ; but the beau ideal of the endogen,
as said before, belongs to the equinoctial regions.

10 ENGLAND THE MINIATURE OP THE WORLD.

It is a proud and inspiring thought for us, neverthe-
less, that art and the skill of the gardener allow us
the sight of them. By virtue of our hothouses and
conservatories, we who live in this age are introduced
to the vegetation of every part of the world, without
the trouble or risk of departing either long or far
from home. England, which stands midway between
extreme cold and extreme heat ; England, with a
surface which embodies in miniature every element
and ingredient, except the volcano, that gives variety
and sublimity to the face of the earth ; — England,
through its art and science, is the EXHIBITION of the
whole world. We need but ask for Saloon A, or
Saloon B,and all that the heart can desire is displayed
to view. Kew ; Chatsworth ; if we cross the Tweed,
Edinburgh ; and Dublin, if we make our way to the
green isle, show collections of palms, among other
things, which amply inform us as to their wonderful
nature. In these glorious places .we see the tropical
regions as in a stereoscope, with the added charm
that all around us is alive.

THE OAK.

FOREMOST among British trees, alike in grandeur,
utility, length of life, and amplitude of association,
stands the Oak, — that famous production which even
in the days of Homer was a time-honoured proverb
for strength and endurance. In England this noble
tree is found under many different forms; the contour,
the endurance of the foliage, the figure of the leaf
and acorn, varying considerably more than the
unobservant of minute particulars would ever sup-

12 THE OAK.

pose. All the varieties are resolvable, however,
intp two principal ones, and these two are so nearly
connected by intermediates, that it is probable the
oak of Old England is after all very like a human
face — presented under innumerable profiles and
complexions, but always and everywhere the same
good old-fashioned combination of features that was
possessed in the beginning. The two principal
forms are the wavy-leaved oak and the flat-leaved,
called respectively by men of science, Quercus
pedunculata and Quercus sessiliflora. The former is
distinguished by its tortuous branches, and the
irregular disposition of the foliage, every leaf lying
in a different plane, and the whole presenting an
aspect of great massiveness. Leaf-stalk there is
scarcely any; the acorns, on the other hand, are borne
upon peduncles which often reach several inches
in length. Individually, the leaves, as expressed in
the name, have a strong tendency to be wavy in their
surface and outline. The flat-leaved oak differs in
its compact form, and strong disposition to round-
ness ; the branches are more horizontal, the leaves
lie in parallel planes, and individually are flat, and
with rather long stalks. In spring we may further
observe that the leaf-buds are larger than in the
peduncidata, and in autumn that the acorns are
shorter and broader, and that they are almost or
totally destitute of peduncles ; if present, the pe-
duncles are stout, not slim and delicate as in the

THE OAK.

13

wavy-leaved. These are distinctions very easily
made out. To trace them is at once an agreeable
and instructive occupation for half an hour, when
we go into the country for a day's enjoyment. Nor

OAK LEAVES.

does it end in the simple discrimination of two
different things ; for the wavy-leaved oak has the
reputation of being a more excellent tree than the
other, while the flat-leaved is considered better
adapted to excite ideas of the picturesque. It may
be added, that both in Britain and upon the Con-
tinent, the wavy -leaved oak, Quercus pedunculata,
is generally found upon better soil than the sessili-
flora, circumstances which may have something to
do with its higher reputation for quality. In France
the chene-a-grappes, as the former is there called,

14 THE OAK.

is always planted in preference to the chene-rouvre,
if the soil be sufficiently good. In the delightful
forest of Meudon, near Paris ; throughout the whole
of the extensive forest of Fontainebleau, and in
the Bois de Boulogne, the latter kind, however,
or Q. sessiliflora, is the only form under which
the oak is to be met with. When both forms are
planted together, provided the soil be good, the
sfissiliflora outgrows the pedunculata. Both are
called by many different names : — Q. pedunculata
is often distinguished as the true British oak, the
white oak, the female oak, the valley oak, and the
early oak — the last name alluding to the rather
earlier development of the foliage : while the sessi-
liflora is called the chesnut oak, the male oak, the
red oak, and the hard oak; occasionally also the
winter oak, from its disposition to retain the dead
leaves far on into the winter ; also, with some, the
hill oak, from its being more frequently found in
upland localities than its competitor. A glorious
spectacle is that of the oak in the month of April,
when its amber-tinted buds stud the tree like so
many jewels. They do not open rapidly, like those
of the sycamore or the horse-chesnut. From first
to last, the life of the oak seems characterised by
placidity. It lives so long that it can afford to
be leisurely in all its movements, and at every
season alike expresses dignity and calmness. In a
little while, when the young leaves are half-expanded,

THE OAK. 15

come the flowers, though not such flowers as we use
for bouquets; nature has other ways of fashioning
flowers than after the model of the rose or lily. To
note these diverse ways is one of the great rewards
and charms of Botany, — which does not mean calling
plants by Latin names, but exploring the nature of
their various parts, discovering how exquisitely they
are fitted for their several uses and destinies, com-
paring one form of leaf or flower with another, and
discerning step by step that nature is all one song,
but coming forth in countless tones, or rather like
an oratorio, where we never have two parts exactly
alike, yet everywhere repetition and reverberation to
the ear that knows how to listen. Flowers are not
necessarily sumptuous and fragrant and brilliant-
hued in order to be flowers. The idea of a flower
implies simply a certain apparatus for the produc-
tion of seed, and that this be large or small is of no
more importance than that the heavenly teachings
should be printed in one kind of type or another.
It is worthy of note also that the timber-trees of
the north are remarkable, as a rule, for the smallness
and the simplicity of their flowers. The short-lived
vegetation of the field and garden seems decked
with its sweet flower-brightness in compensation.
Where our hearts are to be lifted up in admiration
of strength and majesty, gaiety and showy tints can
be dispensed with.

The flowers of the oak, as said above, make their

16 THE OAK.

appearance cotemporaneously with the young leaves,
and under two different forms. First, there are
innumerable yellowish tufts and fringes depending
from near the extremities of the twigs ; among
them are the tips of the rudiments of the future
acorns, scarcely larger than the head of a pin, and
of a deep red colour. The oak is thus one of the
trees in which the distinction of sex is strongly
marked. All plants express, in some way or other,
the omnipresence in organic nature of masculine
and feminine. But it is not always palpable to the
eye. Some philosophers consider that where it is
most plainly set forth, we have a nearer step to-
wards perfection of structure ; and on this ground
they regard the oak and its congeners as more
exalted in the scale of vegetable life even than
apple-trees. Acorns would never be developed
from the rudiments in question, were the tasseled
fringes not to cooperate, and contrariwise the
tasseled fringes are incapable of yielding acorns.
Summer aids the development; then comes calm
October, and the embossed cups, round as a bubble
upon the water, holding them up awhile, as a young
mother holds up her child, cast them to the earth
in kindly largess. But although the acorns may
sprout where they fall, none grow to be even
saplings beneath the shade of the parent. Only
those that get carried away from it become oaks.
And this planting has been observed to be largely

THE OAK. 17

effected through, the instrumentality of squirrels.
So beautifully are the necessities of the various
realms of nature harmonized one to the other. The
little quadruped fulfils an instinct proper and need-
ful to its own existence, and in so doing contributes
to the perpetuation of the tree.

Eepresentatively — that is, as viewed by the light
of poetry, which means, in turn, by the keenest in-
sight of the mind that, penetrating below the surface,
and beholding the centres of things, brings out their
highest value, that is to say, their significance, — re-
presentatively, the oak is strength, endurance, and
dignity, holding the same place among trees that
the lion does among animals, and the eagle among
birds. Hence we find it many times referred to in
Scripture, and always in connection with what is
understood to be permanent and enduring ; as when
the tables of the law are described as having been
set up against an oak, to signify that the law was
given to last for ever. It would be a very trifling
piece of information for the dignity of Scripture to
communicate, if it were no more than the bare
physical fact that the tables were placed against an
oak. Scripture always means something. It is not
a book of words, but of ideas, speaking for all time;
which kind of language results from the facts that
it records being not simply literal but representative.
It is literally true, without doubt, that the tables
were placed against an oak ; it is no less true that

c

18 THE OAK.

an oak was chosen because of its symbolic meaning
for all ages. The poetical character of the oak is
acknowledged again in the time-honoured allusion
to the defenders of our country as " hearts-of-oak."
No one disputes the fact that our sailors are made
of this capital material ; yet how absurd the state-
ment if taken in any other light than that of poetry !
This shows that although much which holds the form
and outward shape of poetry may be unmeaning and
foolish, the inmost and true spirit finds a response
in universal human nature, and that its genuine
language will ever bear interpreting.

The oak is not only a tree, it is a garden and a
country; for living things innumerable find their
homes and security, either among the branches or
upon some portion of the surface. Birds, insects,
epiphytic plants, are identified with the natural
history of the oak to the number probably of several
hundreds ; so that to study the inmates of an oak-
tree, is like exploring the streets and squares of a
populous town, and taking a census of the occupa-
tions of the inhabitants. There is no special or
particular bird found only or chiefly amid the foliage,
nor indeed are birds ordinarily found in definite
kinds of trees; only now and then, as in the case
of the crossbill and the fir, do we find any direct
consociation. For trees are to birds what the ocean
is to the nations of earth, free to the visits of all in
turn, and witnessing every day new arrivals and

THE OAK. 19

new departures. The oak is emphatically of this
nature, and the absence of any particular visitant
renders the grand old hospitality of the oak to the
feathered tribes even more noticeable perhaps than
did any particular species of bird show preference
for it. In the welcome it extends to them, we see
over again why the oak should be the king of trees,
for herein it corresponds with the princes and patri-
cians of human nature, who are the men that possess
hospitable minds, giving kindly hearing to all ideas,
and a welcome to everything that may hold within
it the soul and seed of truth. The ideas and specu-
lations, the theories and hypotheses, which float
"about the atmosphere of human intellectual life, are
to the little world of man just what the birds are to
the physical atmosphere ; the wise man gives a
courteous ear to all, and leaves it to fools to reject
and condemn before they have listened. Nothing
is ever got by shutting one's self up in a creed. It
is better to have an excess of faith than too little.
The Evil One likes no intrenchment better than that
which he finds in the incredulities of pride and
ignorance.

Insects are to the oak a supplement so vast, that
were the tree to be blotted out, the entomologist
would weep. Those lovely creatures that sail on
painted pinions, the butterflies, in many kinds,
beetles, and a multitude of little creeping things
that none but the enthusiast is aware of, flock to it,

c 2

20 THE OAK.

and abide or lodge upon it; and when an oak-tree
is felled, it is an earthquake to them. To the casual
observer this wonderful insect-population is of ne-
cessity not obvious. But no one can help noticing
the certificate and result of its presence. We have it
in the productions termed oak-apples ; also in galls,
and in the yellowish rusty spangles which in autumn
crowd the under-surfaces of the leaves, and look
like the " fairies' money " of a fern. Oak-apples,
the most conspicuous and familiar of these adventi-
tious productions, have nothing in them, as was
once supposed, of the nature of fruit. They receive
their name simply from the rude resemblance they
bear in colour and figure to the juicy produce of the
orchard, and essentially are nothing more than
masses of extravasated sap, dried and consolidated
by exposure to the atmosphere. They originate in
the instinctive actions of an insect, which punctures
the bark or skin, usually selecting a bud, and
deposits her eggs in the wound; in consequence of
this, some abnormal vital action is set up, which
causes the sap that flows towards the wounded part
to ooze out, and in due time to form a globular
lump, the eggs lying snug in the interior. Soon
after midsummer the eggs are hatched, and upon
tearing open one of the so-called apples, the white
grubs may be discerned. Eventually they push
their way to the exterior, become winged creatures,
and fly away. So wonderful are the " homes made

THE OAK. 21

without hands ! " A large volume might be written
upon such abodes of creatures. The ingenuities
which man has brought to bear on his dwellings
have all been anticipated by races of beings to
whom art and science are unknown. It is grand
to contemplate columns and Gothic arches, porticos,
and noble windows, to say nothing of the count-
less contrivances intended to promote domestic
convenience and comfort ; but nowhere is the
splendid instinct of self-protection, which in man
flowers forth in its highest form in architecture,
more exquisitely displayed than in the methods
adopted by insects to secure the same important
end. It has, moreover, the special wonder about it,
of being exercised on such indifferent, and as it
would seem at first sight, such insufficient materials.
Marble and granite, metal and timber, are their
own assurance of solidity and durableness ; the insect
works on substances than which there are none in
nature more soft and tender.

The galls are of precisely similar origin, dating
from the operation of a minute insect allied to
that which lays the foundation of the oak-apple.
When young, they often resemble cherries, and
in the East, from this circumstance, have been
supposed to be the famous " apples of Sodom,"
fair to behold, but turning on the lips to dust and
ashes. Later and more scientific inquiry has
proved this to be an error, but it is an error per-

22 THE OAK.

fectly natural to have been fallen into, since the
appearance is tempting, and the galls produced in
Palestine and the adjacent countries are often large
and brightly-coloured. It is from Smyrna that most
of the galls used in the manufacture of ink are im-
ported. Our English ones would answer the same
purpose, but not so well, nor are they produced in
England in sufficient quantity to make it worth
while to collect them. It would be matter of regret
if they were so produced, because the tree must
needs suffer from the loss of so much sap as is
needed to form them ; and in England, though we
have plenty of oaks, we require them for other
purposes. One kind of oak-gall is produced in
clusters that resemble a thin bunch of red currants ;
another is like a little brown artichoke, being
formed from a leaf-bud which has had its legitimate
growth spoiled by the operation of the insect, and
opens it tiny leaves prematurely, and as simple
brown scales. Least of all, but quite as pretty
as the oak-apple itself, are the " oak-spangles '.'
strewed on the under-surface of the leaves, and
which bear, as just now said, no distant likeness
to the circular mounds of fructification of such
ferns as the common golden-dotted polypody of the
hedgebanks. So strange is the similitude, that a
solitary oak -leaf, jewelled by these beautiful little
growths, and shown to an inexperienced observer,
might and would be taken for a fern-frond ! But

23

a near view at once discloses the difference. While
the spangle of the fern consists of a heap of minute
golden-coloured boxes, every box bursting when
mature, and discharging innumerable atoms of "fern-

OAK-SPANGLES.

seed," the spangle of the oak-leaf is a crowd of
greenish or reddish hairs, and seems as if cut out of a
piece of velvet that might have been worn by Titania.
It consists, of the same kind of substance as the
oak-apple, but disposed in a different form, the
insect which gave the impulse being a different one.
Not the least extraordinary fact in this strange
history is, that out of the same material, the simple

24 THE OAK.

sap of the tree, should arise things so unlike as the
oak-apple and the oak-spangle, and that the differ-
ence should be referable to the diverse influence of
a couple of flies !

But it is in the plants which take up their
residence on the oak that we see its most beautiful
occupants. First, there is that glorious old ever-
green the ivy, which, beginning its career like a
centipede, creeps slowly and tenderly up the surface,
making sure of its wiry footing at every step, and
decks the massive trunk with sweet wandering and
zigzag sprays of green, variegated, if they get light
enough, with unaccustomed hues. While young,
and until quite among the branches, the leaves are
angular. There are no flowers, and perhaps none
ever appear, for the ivy is peculiar in this respect,
unconcerned to bloom so long as it has anything to
cling to, and producing its flowers only at the very
extremities of its growth, when the branches no
longer adhere to the boughs of the tree, and the
leaves become ovate. This is specially remarkable
when ivy clambers up some ancient building, a
castle, or the relics of some roofless abbey ; but it
is plain enough in the case of trees, if the plant be
of sufficient age. There is something peculiarly fine
in the spectacle of a venerable tree with its circling
ivy. At every season of the year ivy gives an air
of richness ; the gloss of the leaves, the easy swing
of the masses of foliage, the chiar3 oscuro caused by

THE OAK. 25

the long petioles, and above all, the pleasing sense
of the stay and security which it affords, — at every
season of the year these are present to the eye and
mind, and render a pilgrimage into the forest one
of those animating poems which nature is ever ready
to recite to us. Bracing up the old tree with its
friendly clamps, so far from being, as many suppose,
an enemy, ivy is in reality a protection ; and when
we see leafless and withered boughs rising above its
verdure, like gigantic antlers, it is not because of
the ivy, but from inanition. Still less is the ivy a
parasite, as often imagined. It is not even an
epiphyte. To be a , parasite, a plant must send
suckers into the very substance of its victim, and
draw from it all that portion of its sustenance which
other plants are accustomed to derive from the soil
by means of roots. Ivy does not do this. Although
attaching itself to the bark of the tree by ten
thousand holdfasts, it has its roots in the earth below,
and from the earth it derives its nourishment ; and
if the stem be severed, it will die like any other
plant, unless, as has happened in some rare instances,
it can manage to sustain life by absorption from the
atmosphere. For this reason also, ivy is not, as we
say, even an epiphyte, an epiphyte being a plant
which simply rests upon the branch of another, just
as certain zoophytes cling to sea-shells.

The oak is tenanted, not only by the ivy, but by
epiphytes and a parasite as well. The parasite is

26 THE OAK.

the mistletoe, — sacred in the legends of the North,
and the berries of which have been supposed to be
the "forbidden fruit." A good deal of uncer-
tainty exists with regard to the mistletoe of the
Druids. If so plentiful upon the oak as to allow
of the tree being regularly visited for the sake of
lopping branches, with the ceremonials which are
reported of it — the white robes, the golden knife,
the hymns, and the procession — then it would
almost appear that some other plant, and not what
we to-day call mistletoe, was the one in request.
For there are scarcely more than six or seven extant
examples of mistletoe growing upon the oak in this
country, and unless it were abundant, at all events in
some parts, it is difficult to see how the ritual could
be carried out, unless at long intervals, and almost
privately. The localities in which mistletoe is to-day
found upon the oak are at Eastnor, near Malvern ;
at Tedstone Delamere ; Dunsfold, Surrey ; near
Basingstoke ; near Plymouth ; and at Frampton.*
There is no reason why mistletoe should not grow
upon oak-trees to-day just as well and as luxuriantly
as it is said to have done in the days of the ancient
Britons. Perhaps the great sanctity ascribed to it
came of the very fact of it being so rare. At the
present day mistletoe is found chiefly upon apple-

* For particulars, and an exhaustive account of the plant
and its associations, see Dr. Berthold Seeman's "Journal
of Botany," vol. ii., p. 361. 1864

THE OAK. 27

trees and hawthorns. Some twenty or thirty other
kinds of trees have been noticed as bearing it, — the
lime, for example, the poplar, and the acacia ; but the
two former are evidently its favourites. Because
of the difficulty referred to as regards the Druids'
mistletoe, some authors have supposed that another
species, not now found in England, though plentiful
in some parts of the Continent, may at the time of
the Druids' worship have existed in our own country,
and that it was extirpated either by themselves, or
by those who sought to help forward Christianity by
effacing every particular connected with paganism.
The plant referred to is called by botanists Loranthus
Europceus.

The epiphytes which give beauty to the oak,
chiefly belong to that section of plants termed the
Flowerless. Not that they are absolutely without
flowers, but that the parts are too small to be viewed
without the aid of a microscope, and thus that they
are ' ' flowerless " only when compared with a rose
or a lily, or even with a grass from the meadow.

Those of their race which seek the kindly service
of the forest-monarch are principally mosses and
ferns. How sweet on a summer's day to rest awhile,
when wandering in the woodland, on the green
mantle that overspreads some prostrate trunk, —
noting the fairy forest of its elastic foliage, and the
pretty little sprays that dart out upon every side,
shooting hither and thither like the frost-flowers

28 THE OAK.

upon the window-panes in mid-winter ! The mosses
of the living oak are of precisely the same kind.
In their tender and elegant sympathies they make
no distinction between the overthrown tree and
the tree that stands in its pride. One of their
most exquisite specialities is that, like ivy and the
faithful wallflower, they are companions alike of
life and death, — oftentimes adorning the one with
bright hues foreign to its nature, and never failing
to render the other beautiful. In the wild and
desolate region called Dartmoor, strangely situ-
ated in a county that otherwise is the " garden of
England," there is a truly wonderful spectacle of
this nature. On the left bank of the river, about
a mile above Two Bridges, the hillside is heaped
with blocks of granite, in the spaces between which
are nearly five hundred trees of the wavy-leaved
oak, singularly distorted. They are gnarled, knot-
ted, and twisted, seldom more than ten to four-
teen feet in height, and with a circumference not
exceeding five feet, and generally much less. The
belt is ragged and interrupted, and extends for the
distance of about -half a mile. Such a group of
trees would not be extraordinary in itself: what
renders the scene so remarkable is that the
branches, except at the extremities, and this not
always, are completely matted over with a moss,
called by botanists, Anomodon curtipendulum. In
most cases the green covering is from ten to twelve

THE OAK. 29

inches in thickness, though the branch that sup-
ports it is not of greater diameter than a child's
wrist. The weight is so considerable as to bend
the branches downwards, just as we may see the
branches of lilacs and other supple trees weighed
down at Christmas by the gentle deposit on them
of abundant snow; and all over the surface of this
beautiful coating of vegetable velvet may be dis-
covered, in their season, the little seed-capsules,
by the produce of which the plant is multiplied.
The name given to this singular spot, which seems
as if it had been touched by the wand of some
botanical enchanter, is Wistman's Wood. It is
easy of access, and should be visited by every one
who may happen to pass through that part of
Devonshire.

Every old wood and forest shows us oaks bearing
ferns. The latter are of the kind called polypody,
or the " many-footed," on account of the numerous
lateral leaflets giving the idea of feet, as in a centi-
pede. On those rude and rugged bosses which the
oak is so apt to form, some ten or twelve feet above
our heads, there may often be seen a tuft of this
elegant plant, perched completely out of reach, and
decked with those gay spangles of bright gold
which render the fern in question so easy of recog-
nition, and attract the eye of the most incurious.
All lovers of nature have been invited in the first
instance to the specialities, by some particular plant

30 THE OAK.

or flower, which, holding up its finger, as it were,
and beckoning, has allured them into one of those
sweet side-chapels of the great cathedral, which,
when a man has once entered, he never desires to
leave. There was a fable in olden time of a coun-
try in which grew lotus-trees. When travellers
entered that country, and tasted of the fruit, they
were overpowered with an indefinable and delicious
longing to remain there always, not necessarily to
be always eating lotus, but to enjoy the heavenly
climate and atmosphere which produced it. That
country, with its lotus-trees, has not been blotted
out. The fable, like every other true one, is for all
time. Living nature, everywhere round about us,
is the country of the lotus, and the fruit is the
serene and innocent delight, with innumerable
sweet teachings for our intelligence, which comes
of our looking at it reverently and lovingly. The
beckoning thus given is always remembered with
pleasure. Fries, the eminent German writer upon
fungi, tells us he was attracted to the study of that
class of plants, by the lustre of the crimson Dryads'
cup, by botanists called Peziza coccinea, which in
the earliest days of spring appears on dead branches
in damp woods and groves, and resembles an acorn-
chamber of coral-red. No slight pleasure is it to
another botanist, albeit a mere stripling by the side
of Fries, to view, over again and yet once more,
year by year, in forest glades, where the trees are

THE OAK. 31

companions, that pretty and simple fern which,
captured his imagination in early youth. The oak
seems to take pride in holding the fern in its giant
arms; the fern shows us how the grandest thing
may be enriched by the simplest, just as great
men, gifted with the might of wisdom, and able
to pour forth in unbroken streams, music that
makes our very soul come up and sit listening in
our ears, still delight to be clasped by the sweet
tendrils of simple hearts, to watch and help their
strivings after the amiable and the true, to listen
to their innocent songs, and to bless them with
their bountiful protection.

The fern upon the oak must not be confounded
with that one specifically termed " oak-fern/7 and
technically called Dryopteris; nor yet must it
be confounded with another which gives a quaint
resemblance to the oak in the section of its stem.
" Oak-fern " has no necessary connection with oak-
trees, and is as often found far away from them as
near. It is so called because the general outline
or profile, when a leaf is laid flat, gives a pleasing
idea of that of an oak standing alone, and viewed
from a distance. This fact of resemblance in out-
line between things in other respects totally un-
connected, is one of the most striking in nature.
We should expect it in some degree from the inti-
mate affinities everywhere displayed to the man of
science. But it is independent of these, lying out-

32 THE OAK.

side, just as the resemblance of the shake in music
to the play of moonlight upon rippled water lies
outside of any actual connection, yet is as much a
part of the method and order of nature as the
ripple of the water itself. So with the charming
similitude of the painted leaves of autumn to the
variegated western sky of evening. The close of
the year and the close of the day acquire each one
of them a tinted loveliness peculiarly their own,
marked and soul-inspiring in the highest degree,
yet, as to their own physical causes, in no measure
connected or comparable. The two things lie out-
side, yet are alike, plainly because God says, death,
departure, decay, need not necessarily be ugly and
disagreeable to look at : they may be made lovely
as life, yea, lovelier ; and if there be wretchedness
in their aspect, probably it is our own eyes that
look obliquely. Whether it be a soul about to
cross the river that has no bridge, or trees that
are about to cast their vestures, and be for awhile,
as it were, dead, or the day that is to be exchanged
for starlight, it is still compatible with its passing
away that the light of beauty shall be diffused
there.

The other fern referred to as being often and
very naturally associated with the oak is, in truth,
like the Dnjopteris, the image of an oak-profile, but
it is not from that circumstance that the connection
has been supposed to exist. When the stem of the

THE OAK. 33

plant in question, commonly called Bracken, and
by botanists Pteris Aquilina, is cut slantwise a short
distance above the root, the section of the sap-
vessels gives a kind of rude drawing of an ancient
oak, loaded with exuberant foliage that bends the
massive branches towards the ground. A thousand
strange resemblances of this nature might be de-
scribed, showing that our world is positively one
of echoes — not necessarily for the ear, but rather
and mainly for the eye, which in its powers and
privileges is the synthesis and compend of all the
organs of sense.

Lastly, concerning the oak, should be mentioned
the mighty age which it attains —

" The monarch oak, the patriarch of trees,
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees ;
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state, and in three more decays."

Nine hundred years, that is to say, constitute the
ordinary term of oak-life. But there are in Great
Britain many examples of oak-trees of ages far ex-
ceeding this. The Salcey-forest Oak in Northamp-
tonshire, described by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder as
" one of the most picturesque sylvan ruins that can
be met with any where," is calculated on good grounds
to be more than fifteen hundred years old; while
in Clipstone Park, Nottinghamshire, stands a vene-
rable tree called the Parliament Oak, from a tradi-

34 THE OAK.

tion that under its branches a Parliament was held
by Edward I. in the year 1290, at which time it is
probable that it was an old and large example of
its species. We count it a grand thing if a man
lives to be a hundred years old. How trifling is
such an age compared with that of an oak, which
in its ruins reminds us of Palmyra !

THE PINE.

AMONG the many fine tribes of plants which consti-
tute the Vegetable Kingdom, not one presents
aspects more admirable than the family named after
the Pine-tree. No trees attain greater stature than
these. In very few instances do we find an equal

D 2

36 THE PINE.

longevity, or a corresponding massiveness of trunk
and although the number of different species is
comparatively small, no trees form forests of extent
so vast, or of composition so exclusive. Linnaeus
gave to the palm-trees of the tropics the happy
name of the " princes of vegetable nature : " he
might, with still greater propriety, have termed the
palms the vegetable princes of hot countries ; the
pines and firs and their allies, the princes of cold
ones. For while exogenous or branching trees are
diffused over the whole world, and are found under
every variety of climate — except the extreme frigid,
where no life can endure, — palm-trees, on the one
hand, are restricted within certain parallels of
latitude, decreasing the further we depart from the
equinoctial; and pine and fir-trees, on the other
hand, belong emphatically to cold and temperate
countries.

Not that either of these great races is without
example where the other prevails. Far from it.
There are palms even in the south of Europe,
where they form an attractive novelty to the
English visitor, especially to one seeking those
portions of the Mediterranean coast of France
which are the winter resort of invalids ; and ano-
ther kind, indigenous to the cooler parts of China,
appears to be hardy enough to bear English Christ-
mas weather without protection, being already an
ornament of many a lawn. Similarly, there are

-THE PINE. 37

trees of the pine and fir kind in the tropics ; but it
is generally at a considerable elevation above the
level of the sea, or where the mountain-side provides
a habitat and temperature not unlike that of the
lowlands of the temperate zones.

One of the most interesting facts in botanical
geography is the concordance between the vegetable
productions of the plains in given latitudes, whether
north of the equator or south of it, and those of the
mountain-sides in latitudes not far removed. To
ascend a mountain in the tropical and sub -tropical
zones, is like setting out from the foot of that
mountain and going due north in a direct line ; or
if the mountain in question be upon the Australian
side of the equator, then it is like starting from the
base and going in a direct line southwards. In a
less degree, this curious parallelism is observable
even in the mountains of Europe, which present
successively, as we ascend them, the plants of coun-
tries more and more northerly. It may be re-
marked in the mountains of our own island. Very
different is the vegetation of Borrowdale from that
of the tremendous summits which rise upon its
flanks. In the meadow by the river are the purple
columbine and the lotus ; as we ascend the slopes,
their place is taken by the parsley-fern ; and by-
and-by we enter the region of the club-mosses
and the alpine lady's-mantle, with leaves that are
plaited like a fan, and lined as it were with satin.

38 THE PINE.

Here too are saxifrages and mosses, that, like the
chamois tribe, are never seen upon the plains.

Just of this nature, only on a far grander scale,
is the succession of plants upon a mountain-side in
countries near the line. Ararat, Teneriffe, and the
Himalayas, show it in perfection ; and thus are we
prepared for the existence of pine and fir-trees at a
very little distance from palms, but higher up.
Some of the noblest of the race are found upon the
high grounds of Mexico and northern India ; and
coming nearer home, every one will remember the
frequent allusions in Holy Writ to the firs upon the
mountains of Palestine, and to the cedars that made
Lebanon glorious, as contrasted with the palms
which flourished by the water-side. The world may
be compared to two great snow-capped mountains
of the tropics, sliced off and placed base to base,' so
that the tops shall be the poles, the midway portions
the temperate zones, the conjoined bases the equa-
torial zone. In this fact there is no slight value,
since the exact ratio that a given elevation bears to a
certain distance north or south of the equator, is
now pretty well known, and skilful men can calcu-
late what plants are likely to allow of culture in
remote countries, where instead of plains there are
mountains, or vice versa.

In the structure of their stems and branches,
pine and fir-trees resemble the oak. They have
distinct bark, wood, and pith, and the annual rings

THE PINE. 39

by which their ages may be reckoned, are ordinarily
very distinct. Viewed with the microscope, the
fibres of the wood are found however to present a
very singular and pretty appearance. They are
marked from end to end with circular depressions,
so differently dispersed as to serve as capital dis-
tinctive characters for the various kinds. Such
marks rarely occur elsewhere, and are specially in-
teresting in the case of the pine and fir tribe, from
the circumstance of their being retained even when
the wood is fossilized. This wonderful instrument,
the microscope, not only illuminates the present,
and by opening our eyes and hearts to a thousand
new experiences of delight, absolutely lengthens
life, since life, truly so called, consists in agreeable
impressions : it not only does this — it casts light
into the graves of Time, and informs us of the
nature of the trees that swayed in the wind of the
infinite past, long before there were men and women
to listen. The leaves, on the other hand, so far
from resembling those of oaks, are narrow, and
usually needle-shaped. Their veins, instead of
meandering in all directions, run in lines that con-
verge towards the point, and not seldom the entire
leaf is little more than a stiff green bristle. So with
the flowers. Though definite apparatus is present
for the production of seed, and the distinction of
sex is as plainly marked as in the oak, here every-
thing is of the most simple kind. The sweet bright-

40

.THE PINE.

THE PINE. 41

ness of rose and lily is entirely wanting ; even the
plain coverings of a grass-blossom are not to be
found; Nature seems to have taken pleasure in
showing how, with the utmost stateliness of figure,
could be associated the last extreme of incomplete-
ness as to flowers. The stamens make their ap-
pearance either in little sheaves along the branches,
as in the larch-tree, or in clusters that seem moun-
tains of such sheaves; the pistils are developed in
connection with the rudiments of those elegant and
familiar productions known as fir-cones ; — not how-
ever, as in other plants, in the form of a closed
ovary, but as flat scales, with the ovules lying at
the base ; and when the time arrives for the pollen
to be conveyed to the ovules, it is transmitted, not
through a stigma and style, but immediately. The
pollen gone, the stamens wither away and fall to the
ground ; the clusters of ovules, with their protecting
scales, undergo changes similar to those of ripening
fruits, and in due time we get the cone, now a hard
and solid body, and oftentimes more like the work
of the wood-carver than the produce of a tree. The
variety in these cones is most wonderful. We see
in it once more how amazing is the ingenuity that,
dealing with a simple idea, apparently susceptible
of no modification, shall nevertheless play upon it
as a musician upon his lute, and strike us the more
by displaying resources where and when least ex-
pected. The pieces of which the cone is composed

42 THE PINE.

are not, as would at first appear, altered remains of
a perianth ; they are the scales by which the female
flowers were sheltered, now enlarged and indurated,
and forming a kind of capsule for the seeds. While
young, they remain closed ; when mature, especially
if exposed to warmth, they separate, and the seeds
fall to the ground. But in many cases the seeds
are provided with a wing, which enables the wind
to carry them to a distance.

What a beautiful phenomenon is this of the wings
of seeds ! " Give us wings " is the universal cry of
nature; and though we commonly associate such
wings with plants like thistles and dandelions, in
truth there are as fine examples, yea finer ones,
among trees. One of the most exquisite productions
of nature is the winged seed of the Brazilian tree
called by botanists Bignonia ecfiinata. Though in
no way related to the pines and firs, it has a wing to
every seed, spreading on each side like a film of
iridescent glass, thinner than the thinnest tissue-
paper, and in width and general appearance remind-
ing us of a white butterfly. When cast into the
air, the seed slowly circles downwards, like a falling
leaf in October, unless caught by a current of air,
when it sails away into the aerial sea. The peculiar
fruit of the pines and firs — familiarly known, as
above said, by the name of the "cone" — was early
taken advantage of in order to give an appropriate
name to the family. Whether pines or firs, cedars

THE PINE. 43

or larches, botanists call this magnificent race by
the name of " Conifers/' or " Cone -bearers," and
under this name we shall henceforth always speak
of them.

One species only is a native of Britain — that one
commonly known as the Scotch fir, though tech-
nically a pine.

The difference between a pine and a fir is very
easily made out. Firs have their leaves irregularly
distributed over the surface of the branch or twig,
and every leaf grows quite distinct and apart from
its neighbours. In pines, on the contrary, the long
leaves grow in couples, or in threes, or in fives, and
the base of every set is enclosed in a sheath formed
of brown scales. Moreover, in the cone of a fir-tree,
the scales are always thin at the edge ; whereas, in
the cone of a pine-tree, they are much thickened,
forming protuberances upon the general surface,
and giving the cone that richly-tesselated appear-
ance which is so greatly admired. The " Scotch
fir," accordingly, is properly the Scotch pine, as
expressed in its botanical name, — Pinus sylvestris.
It grows wild throughout the Highlands of Scotland,
and, not improbably, is wild also in some parts of
England; but so many thousands of trees have
been planted for use and ornament, that now it is
next to impossible to discriminate the aborigines, if
any really survive. The place to look for wild ones
is the remote mountain- side. So thoroughly is the

44 THE PINE.

pine a mountaineer, — so truly indeed, are all conifers
children of the heights, that it is supposed by some
that the very name of Pinus is but an altered form
of the ancient Celtic word for a mountain, as pre-
served to this day in Ben Lomond, Ben Nevis, Ben
Cruachan, and in the name of the Apennines. Were
this the place, an entire chapter might be written
on geographical names taken from plants and trees,
and, contrariwise, on names of trees, &c., taken from
those of countries and localities; it must suffice,
however, to indicate that such a subject awaits the
scrutiny of the curious, and to mention the Morea,
as so called on account of that peninsula resembling
in its outline the leaf of the mulberry-tree, Morus
nigra ; and Buckinghamshire, as signifying the
home of the beech-trees, "beech" being only
another spelling of the older Teutonic name, luck,
or ~buch.

As we are made best acquainted with it, the
Scotch pine is generally found in great platoons, or
used almost alone for large plantations. Sometimes
it is mingled with others of its race ; frequently
it is the only tree over an area of miles in extent.
It is altogether unfit for a hedgerow tree, being
incapable of giving shelter when standing alone,
and soon becoming unsightly. Whether formed of
this tree alone, or of conifers in variety, a pine-wood
is one of the most imposing scenes in nature. It is
totally different from a forest of trees such as oaks.

THE PINE. 45

The latter kinds of trees are deciduous. Not so the
conifers. These, excepting the larch, preserve their
foliage all the year round, of course periodically-
casting the dead leaves, after the manner of plants
in general, but still, for ever and always continuing
dressed in green. At two seasons of the year, the
conifers, like other trees, show a difference in their
complexion ; namely, in spring, when the new
shoots start forwards, oftentimes in elegant hori-
zontal sprays, like the hands of a strong swimmer
put forth for the new stroke j or lifted on high, like
plumes of green hair : — they are remarkable again
in late autumn, especially in the case of the Scotch
pine, when other trees are fast becoming dismantled.
For at this season, in the gloom of November, often
indeed in October, when the ground is strewed with
the earliest fallen leaves of the ash and the sycamore,
the Scotch pine also casts its older leaves ; and the
new ones, developed during the summer that is now
a memory, no longer clouded by the dark and
brownish hue of the departing ones, shine with a
lustre we do not observe except at this moment.
In a word, Scotch firs usually look best at the close
of autumn. With the evergreen character of the
tree is to be associated, if we would rightly under-
stand the pine-forest, the remarkable uprightness
and straightness of the trunks, and generally
speaking, the symmetry and mathematical precision
of the branches. The Scotch pine is less remarkable

46 THE PINE.

in this respect than many others; they are features,
nevertheless, in which it shares. A coniferous tree
is never found accommodating itself to the surface of
broken ground. The branches never hang them-
selves over a waterfall or the brink of a ravine.
They refuse to receive impressions from surrounding
conditions, maintaining their own original and in-
flexible direction. On a mountain- side, we may
notice, even as we rush past in a rail way- carriage,
the stiff and erect green pyramids, every tree the
exact counterpart of every other, and the stems as
straight as the columns of an ancient temple. Go
into the deepest and shadiest glen, and it is still
the same. Not a bough deviates from the angle
prescribed by the great Architect; we seem to
be in a kind of vegetable Alhambra, so regular
are the proportions, so tall and so graceful are the
pillars.

In a pine-forest this straightness is made so much
the more noticeable from the circumstance of the
trunks of the trees being ordinarily destitute of
branches for a considerable distance above the
ground, so that we seem to be thrown into a laby-
rinth of brown poles. On these branchless trunks
is seen neither mistletoe nor ivy. A peculiar inde-
pendence and royalty of nature in the conifers
generally, seems to keep all such visitors aloof.
True, there are examples of both parasites and
epiphytes occurring upon them ; but in England

THE PINE. 47

this is very rarely the case, — so rarely, that the ex-
ception is merely the proof of the rule. No wood-
bine ever twines round the stem of a pine or fir.
The wild clematis, that loves to deck other trees
with its flossy tufts, at the season when red berries
abound, is to the conifers an utter stranger. Even
brambles and wild roses, which often contrive to
find a lodgment for their upper trailers amid the
boughs of the forest, are denied entrance by the
conifer. To all comers there is still the same old
dignified refusal of admission.

Partly owing to the dead leaves upon the soil,
and partly to the dense and unbroken shade given
by the conifers, — and by none more decidedly than
by our indigenous species, — in the pine-wood again
there is an almost painful dearth of herbaceous
vegetation, and consequently of flowers. No one
ever gathers primroses in a pine-wood. The
ground is never lighted up with anemones ; nor do
blue-bells or forget-me-nots spread carpets of azure
upon it. A few procumbent brambles, serving
only as traps for the feet ; a few of the larger
kinds of sylvan shield-fern, and a few mosses that
grow in cushion-form tufts, constitute nearly the
whole of the vegetation. Scattered among their
alien-looking foliage are the withered brown
needles and the emptied cones that have fallen from
overhead, perhaps even years ago, for they are slow
to decay; and except that quaint fungi spring up

48 THE PINE.

in autumn, there is nothing else to attract the mere
collector into these solemn recesses.

But for the contemplative and the poetic mind,
there is no more powerful influence than is found in
the pine-wood, and this at any season of the year.
In truth, the pine-wood is not a place wherein to
note seasons. It is independent of them ; present-
ing none of that sweet succession which makes
ever-changing picture-galleries of the meadows;
and except when the trees sustain their share of the
white wonder of winter, the aspect is perennially the
same. The pine- wood is always still. Therefore
we note in it more intensely than anywhere else,
that grand sound of the wind among the tops that
is so like ^the distant song of the sea. This cir-
cumstance has attracted the notice of observers
of nature in all ages. Theocritus, who wrote pasto-
rals more than 2000 years ago, commences one of
his poems with — " Sweet is the murmur of the wind
among the pine-trees \" The poets of our own age
might be quoted a hundred times, in echo. Probably
the sound in question comes of the needle-like form
of the leaves, and of their infinite number, the wind
playing among them in a way that the broad flat
leaves of such trees as the oak cannot possibly
admit of. Then there the associations ; for a true
poet never rests in the sentiment of simple beauty
or the sense of awe, or of grandeur, or of duration.
His sympathies run immediately to things that con-

THE PINE. 49

cern the welfare and the happiness of his race. The
test of tmcommon sense is that it can throw light
upon the things that belong to " common " sense ;
and the test of the true poet is that he can enter
into the practical, illustrate it, make it more de-
lightful in our eyes and to our daily experience ;
that he can marry, in a word, the ideal to the
familiar and prosaic. If he do not do this, he is
only a sentimentalist, and the world does not re-
quire him, nor profit by his presence in it. Take
for instance the thoughts that arrest the mind as to
the utility of these wonderful trees. The profusion
of their growth, and their stateliness, as set forth in
the pine-wood ; their duration also, and the serenity
of their lives, all seem fitting counterparts of their
inexpressible value to man. Timber of the most
admirable description, as deal and cedar; resins in
a score of kinds, translucent and inflammable ; with
many other useful articles of human need, are sup-
plied by their different species, and in some cases,
are the last that we should expect from conifers.
Creasote, that assuages the pain of an aching tooth,
is derived from a conifer; so is that exquisite
balsam in which the microscopist preserves his
curiosities, giving them a shrine such as monarch
never possessed. Canada-balsam, the substance
used for this purpose by microscopists, represents in
their hands the resin of those ancient conifers which
we now know under the name of amber. For

E

50 • THE PINE.

amber was once the liquid secretion of a primseval
pine or fir, and the insects we find embedded in it
were preserved by the elegant operations of nature,
just after the same manner as those of the microsco-
pist's cabinet.

So true is it over again that man, with all his in-
genuities and discoveries, when he opens his eyes
and walks into the archives of nature, invariably
finds that he is only a copyist, — an unintentional
and unconscious one, it may be, but still only a
copyist. Nature is beforehand with him in all his
devices and designs.

Even food is supplied by conifers, namely, in the
seeds contained in their cones, which are often of
considerable size, and full of nutritious matter.
This is the case with the seeds of the stone-pine,
which are commonly eaten in Italy. The Swiss and
Siberian pines, and many others, also yield eatable
seeds. Wood, as supplied by the conifers, has its
most celebrated representative in that of the cedar-
tree. But the true cedar, native of the mountains
of Lebanon and thence called Cedrus Ifibani, must
not be confounded with the red cedar used for lead-
pencils. The latter is the produce of an entirely
different tree, the Junip&rus Bermudiana, and, as its
botanical name imports, is brought from the West
Indies. Lebanon cedar is pale and yellowish ; and
although it exhales an agreeable odour, the scent is
by no means so strong as that of the pencil-cedar.

THE PINE. 51

There is an impression with some people that the
ark was built of cedar- wood, since the consonants
in the name gopher bear some resemblance. But
this is altogether hypothetical : what ' ' gopher " was
seems quite past finding out. The cedars of Lebanon,
it may be added, are not, as has often been thought,
nearly extinct. There is a pathetic account, in
certain books, of only 23 being found in the middle
of the 16th century ; only 22 a hundred years later ;
in 1737, only 15; in 1810 only 12; and in 1818
only seven ! The writer admits, however, that
there were always "plenty of young ones," the
above figures referring only to the patriarchs ; and
now it appears, from recent explorations, that the
tree is still plentiful, though not exactly upon
Lebanon.

There is something very grand, again, in the con-
templation of the vast age attained by conifers, the
ordinary minimum being two or three centuries.
That is to say, two or three centuries constitute
their potential lease of life, which they will exhaust,
if not prematurely destroyed either by accident
or for the purposes of human enterprise and need.
Many species live to be seven or eight hundred
years old, and the colossal Wellingtonias of Cali-
fornia are estimated to reach nearly 2000. In the
Crystal Palace at Sydenham, up to the time of the
disastrous fire, December 30th, 1866, stood the
bark of the lower portion of the trunk of one of

E 2

52 THE PINE.

these vegetable Anakim, — for they are giants as
well as primaevals, — and no one who glanced at it
could doubt for a moment that the tree must have
been alive in the days of the Caesars. We have
nothing like such longevity exhibited in any coni-
fers in England, though there are examples of yews
in this country computed to be more than 2000 years
old ; but it is quite enough for the reflective man to
stand in a forest of such trees as the Scotch fir, and
consider what a dynasty he confronts. The vener-
able in nature is always commanding; but when
age stretches back to the days of the Coliseum, it
becomes almost above believing. Never, perhaps,
does the brevity of human existence affect us so
powerfully as when contrasted with these seemingly
immortal trees. Generations come and go, but they
continue unchanged. Schleiden, the celebrated
German botanist, and some disciples of his in Eng-
land, compare these vegetable Nestors to the planet
on which we dwell, — teaching that the trunk of
the tree is the analogue of the surface of the earth,
while the foliage represents the successive tides of
population. Nor is there anything in the com-
parison that philosophy would object to. The indi-
vidual contents of the world are in every instance
miniatures, after their own fashion and in their own
way, of the magnificent total of nature. Every one
of them is imperium in imperio — a kingdom within
a kingdom, presenting all the parts, principles, and

THE PINE. 53

phenomena of the collective, only in a subdued and
more attenuated manner, appropriate to the sphere
of its own utility.

Tall, straight, hardy, and long lived, our noble
Scotch fir is a native of Europe generally, but not
of America. The flowers appear plentifully in May
and June, and towards the close of summer the
young green cones may be found, presenting how-
ever, so different an appearance from the brown,
open, and emptied "fir-bobs" which strew the
ground below, that seen asunder, the inexperienced
could scarcely imagine them the same thing. At
this period they are green, tapering, and with an
unbroken and tesselated surface. They require
about eighteen months to become perfectly ripe.
None are produced till the tree is fifteen or twenty
years old; after that they are plentiful every season;
and on careful scrutiny, will be found to contain
from 60 to 100 seeds each. These, when they vege-
tate, like those of all other conifers, show the pretty
novelty of five or six cotyledons instead of the
pair we are accustomed to in our flower-gardens, or
the solitary one of lilies and cereals. .Hence the
conifers are described as " polycotyledonous."

As a timber-tree for poor soils, and in exposed situ-
ations, the Scotch fir has no superior, except perhaps,
the larch. Different soils, however, greatly affect
it. Upon chalk this tree is short-lived, and never
attains any considerable dimensions; those soils

54 THE PINE.

suit it best which are favourable also to the sycamore,
the elm, the oak, and the ash. A cubic foot of the
wood, when recently cut, has an average weight of
64 Ibs. ; when dry, the weight is reduced to about
36 Ibs. The facility with which it can be worked
renders it exceedingly valuable to the carpenter. It
is at once straight, light, and stiff; and although like
the wood of all other conifers, it contains knots, they
are much more easily travelled through by the
joiner's tools, and are much less liable to drop out
of flooring boards, than is the case with the knotty
timber of the spruce and silver fir. Rafters, gir-
ders, and joists may be procured of smaller dimen-
sions by using Scotch fir than from any other wood
yet discovered.

THE BEECH.

THE Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is one of the noblest
of our forest-trees. It rises to the height of eighty
or a hundred feet, with a circumference of eight to
eleven feet, and in dimensions, when full grown,
surpasses all except the oak. On Sunning Hill, in
Windsor Forest, there is one of exceptionally great
antiquity and bulk, the circumference, at six feet
from the 'ground, being no less than twelve yards.
No tree forms woods so dry and pleasant to walk in,
though grasses do not nourish beneath the shade ;
and at every season of the year it presents some
remarkable and pleasing peculiarity. In the depth
of winter it is told by the smooth grey bark and the
arrangement of the branches ; in spring by the
buds ; in summer by the leaves ; while in autumn^,
if close by, we have the very curious seed-pods, and
at a distance, those auburn and coppery-golden dyes
which place the beech in the front rank of painted-
foliage trees.

The general character of the trunk and branches
gives the idea, more than is done by any other tree,
of that glorious style of architecture termed the
Gothic. The columned temples of ancient Greece,
and the still older ones of ancient Egypt, lead the
imagination away to palm-trees, and in all probability

56 THE BEECH.

are mementos of the use of those trees by the
earliest designers of high-class buildings; in the
beech, on the other hand, though there is no reason
to suppose that there is any actual artistic and
historical connection between the two things, we
are powerfully reminded of the clustered pillars of
a Gothic cathedral, and especially of such as are
formed of many independent and slender shafts, as
in Westminster Abbey, and ordinarily in the style
called "Early English." A grand old cathedral,
with its innumerable harmonies of splendour, its
" long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults," its dimness
and arcaded scenery, its calm, and repose, and cool-
ness, its broken sunbeams, and imitative leaf and
climbing plant on every vantage, — and not these
only, but with its quiet and sculptured tombs, with
mitred abbot and belted warrior, sleeping so softly,
"While the'sound of those they fought for,
And the steps of those they wrought for,
Echo round their bones for evermore," —

a grand old cathedral, we say, with these and its
thousand other solacing and inspiring charms, is
always the counterpart, among men's works, of the
ancient forest, where, in some mode or another,
every one of its imposing qualities is reverberated ;
— it is pleasing, accordingly, to find that here and
there, amid the trees of the wood, the exact forms
and ideas worked out by the builder seem antici-
pated. In this one, the beech, we have not merely

THE BEECH. 57

the tall pillar, "smooth, except for odd cavities,
depressions, and knobs ; but in well-developed indi-
viduals, those singular groupings of erect branches
which wear the semblance of clustered columns,
and by-and-by give out from their summits, grace-
fully sweeping arches that seem the ribs of a roof
of air. The smoothness of the bark fits the beech,
more than any other tree, for the carving of letters
and inscriptions, which, though distorted in the
course of a few years, and eventually quite lost, by
the gradual expansion and decay of the outer portion,
are for a while as clear and sharp as if cut in
stone. How beautiful and how ancient are the
associations of this practice ! " There is a man,"
exclaims one of Shakspere's immortal characters,
" There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our
young trees, carving Rosalind on their barks."
Twenty-five centuries before then lived Paris and
CEnone — the former that famous youth who, bred
among old Priam's shepherds, and tending his
flocks upon Mount Ida, was suddenly called to
adjudge the prize of beauty among the goddesses.
Venus persuaded him with the promise of the finest
woman in the world to wife, and for the sake of
Helen, poor OEnone was forsaken. Till that ill-
fated hour, from which dated the overthrow of Troy,
and all the incidents and fables embosomed in the
choicest poems of antiquity, CEnone and Paris had
been playmates and lovers. Gone from her for

58 THE BEECH.

ever, now she writes him one of those tender and
moving epistles which Ovid has preserved for us as
the "Letters of the Heroines/' reminding him of
the happy days when they were partakers in the
same amusements, and when he had been used to
carve her name on the bark of trees.

" Incisae servant a te mea nomina fagi;

Et legor CEnone falce notata tul
Et quantum trunci, tantum mea nomina crescunt ;
Crescite, et in titulos surgite recta meos ! "

" The beeches still preserve my name, carved by
your hand, and ( CEnone,' the work of your pruning-
knife, is read upon their bark. As the trunks in-
crease, the letters still dilate; they grow and rise
as testimonies of my just claim upon your love ! "
If the remembrance of these soft moments could
not recall to hen his wandering affection, how little,
she expresses in this simple and pathetic allusion,
can she hope to recover it in any other way. The
poplar was used for the same purpose in ancient
times, as we may gather from the lines which follow :
" There grows a poplar," she continues, " by the
river-side (ah, I well remember it !), on which is
carved the motto of our love. Flourish, thou pop-
lar ! fed by the bordering stream, whose furrowed
bark bears this inscription, — ' Sooner shall Xanthus
return to his source, than Paris be able to live with-
out CEnone.' " By comparison, these things are
trifles ; to some they may seem silly, and not worth

THE BEECH. 59

the citation. But to a heart that loves to contem-
plate the sweet simplicities of nature, and how little
change the lapse of time promotes in all that con-
cerns human affections and human sympathies, such
records are dear. In these tender lines, as much
as in any of the simple narratives of the Old Testa-
ment, we see that the passions and the events of
to-day, the fidelities and the inconstancies, the
lettered beech and the poplar by the river, are the
same old and long-past ones over again. Human
life and nature are everywhere like the waterfalls
among the Alps, sparkle, and teardrops, and rain-
bows whenever we look, though the stream is never
the same for a single instant.

Early in the spring the beech seems everywhere
armed with little brown spikes. These are the
buds, which in the peculiarity of their shape differ
from those of every other British forest-tree. They
are formed at the close of the previous autumn, and
though during the winter the increase in size is
scarcely perceptible, there appears to be still a slow
progression. One of the most beautiful and sug-
gestive phenomena in connection with tree-life is
this early commencement of spring. For while the
almanac states March or April to be the beginning,
and while our own first impressions seem to confirm
it, in truth the beginning of spring is many months
before. Just as on a sweet summer's night, before
the last glow of the sunset has quite departed,

60 THE BEECH.

Aurora peeps from the east, so at the close of
summer, if we look sharp, we may find indications
on every hand, that a new season of life and energy
is in reserve, and beginning even now. The buds of
the hedgerow willows are swollen, and often shining
and silvery with the soft white silk that wraps their
contents ; the alder-trees and the hazels are hung
with the green rudiments of their intended catkins ;
every musician has his instrument ready, and waits
only to see the lifted hand that shall give the signal.
All things begin farther back than we are apt to
suppose; nature's cradles, like those of wicker,
have not more of beginning in them than of ending.
Presently these little brown spikes begin to open at
their sharp extremities. The coverings roll away,
and in due time fall to the ground, strewing the sur-
face till it looks like a threshing-floor. At the same
time are disclosed the young green leaves and the
inner coverings, which are of a delicate pink colour,
dry, soft and shining, wavy and half-curled, and so
thin that the light goes through them. They hang
about the opening leaves, and in the contrast of
their exquisite tint, produce one of the loveliest
spectacles of the vernal season. Botanists call these
pretty and transitory vestments of the buds the
"perules." Every tree possesses analogous ones,
larger or smaller, according to the species, but in
none are they more delicately fashioned or tinted.
The leaves themselves are doubled up precisely after

THE BEECH. 61

the manner of a lady's fan, whence it is that on a
fine warm day, in the beech (as happens in the syca-
more and several other trees), there seems an almost
miraculous start into life. The mode in which leaves
are folded while in the bud, varies most wonderfully.
Sometimes the leaf is rolled up like a scroll of paper.
Sometimes it is doubly rolled, or from each edge
towards the central line, and not infrequently this
condition is reversed by the roll being directed
backwards. There are trees, and herbaceous plants
also, in which the rolling is like that of a coil of
ribbon ; and here in the beech, as we have said, the
folding is like that of a fan. The rapidity with
which leaves expand is of course greatly influenced
by their primitive condition, and thus it is more to
the arrangement of the parts than to any casual or
external circumstance that we are to look for the
explanation of their very various rate of opening.
So true is it, once over again, that when we desire
to discover truth, we must go inside. The differ-
ences in the arrangement of the leaves in the bud
often accompany considerable differences in other
particulars. The plum-tree, for instance, and the
cherry-tree, are not more distinct in their produce
than in this curious particular of the early leaf-
folding, for while in the plum-tree the " vernation "
is " convolute," in the cherry-tree it is " condupli-
cate."

While young, the leaves of the beech are orna-

62 THE BEECH.

mented with lines of silky hairs, which at the same
moment constitute a defence for them. With the
expansion of the blade, these lines of hairs are dis-
covered to coincide with the veins ; while along the
edge of the leaf, projecting from it like the eyelashes
from the margin of the eyelid, are similar hairs,
which give it the most delicate fringe conceivable.
No other British forest-tree has its young leaves
thus fringed, so that in this one single particular we
possess a certain guide. A young beech grove,
about the middle of May, when the foliage is toler-
ably well expanded, presents one of the greenest
and airiest sights that trees afford. The leaves are
singularly thin and translucent, and these innumer-
able silvery fringes seem to aid in detaining the
light. Embosoming ourselves in a little thicket
of young beech, we learn for the first time in
its fulness, what is the meaning of green, and the
force of that charming line in Coleridge, —

" The level sunshine glimmers with green light."

Fully expanded, the characteristic feature of the
beech-leaf is at once obvious. To recognise this, it
is useful to remember that tree-leaves are of five
principal forms, viz. —

1. Needle-shaped, as in pines and firs.

2. Simple and with a midrib, as in the beech,

oak, elm, lime, alder, hornbeam, hasel-nut,
birch, poplar, willow, Spanish chestnut.

THE BEECH.

63

3. Simple and palmate, as in the maple, sycamore,

and plane.

4. Digitate, as in the horse-chestnut.

5. Pinnate, as in the walnut and ash.

Two or three of those in the second class have the
blade rather larger upon one side of the midrib than
upon the other. This is the case with the beech, the
margin of which is at the same time quite free

Leaf of Beech-tree.

from notches or incisions, and by these two simple
characters it may thus, under any circumstances,
be identified. In general figure the leaf is ovate, or
of the shape of the vertical section of an egg, but
pointed at the extremity ; the stalk is very short ; the
primary veins proceed towards the margin in
parallel and nearly equidistant lines ; and the sur-
face is quite smooth.

64 THE BEECH.

Convinced, as are all thinking men, of the abso-
lute unity of nature, and with ten thousand familiar
illustrations lying at our feet, it is agreeable to note
those more recondite ones which " crop out," as
geologists say, where least expected, and under
conditions and circumstances the most dissimilar.
Who, for example, at the first glance, recognises
in the class of leaves to which that of the beech is
referable, and which is the predominant one in nature,
the meanest herb and weed being possessed of it
as well as the stateliest of trees : — who, at the first
glance, recognises in it the idea which is wrought
out perfectly and consummately in the human body ?
The midrib of the leaf corresponds to and prefigures
the spinal column ; the great ribs which strike out
therefrom prefigure the bones which are called by
the same name ; the interior is traversed by a multi-
tude of delicate sap-vessels, which answer to the
veins and their crimson blood ; and over the entire
surface is spread an exquisitely -organised skin,
through pores in which the leaf absorbs moisture,
and perspires, and performs other functions so simi-
lar to those of the skin of the human body, that if
clogged with dirt or soot, the plant suffers no less
severely than a human being who ignores the bath.
Nor is this all. Every portion of the blossom of a
plant is a leaf curiously modified, so as to perform
the various and special functions that pertain to
flower -life. Sepals and corolla, stamens and pistil,

THE BEECH. 65

all these parts are leaves metamorphosed, while in
the seed-pod we often find the leaf scarcely altered,
as happens in the legnme of the pea. Just as the
ribs in the human skeleton are so curved and dis-
posed as to form the great pectoral cavity in which
lie the most vital organs of the animal fabric, so in
the pod of the pea we find the edges of the leaf so
brought together as to convert it into a casket for the
seeds — the most important part of the plant, and
round the history of which are concentrated all the
most admirable phenomena of its existence. Leaves
scarcely altered, except in texture, similarly consti-
tute the seed-pods of the larkspur, the aconite, and
that gay golden blossom of spring, called the marsh-
marigold ; and exactly conforming with all these are
the great seed-follicles of the South American trees
called Sterculias.

The great glory of the beech is disclosed in the
month of October. The leaves then assume many
shades of yellow and amber, and the surface being
well adapted to reflect the light of the setting sun,
the spectacle, when the weather is fine and mild, is
most effective. Amid the immensely varied hues
supplied by oak and chestnut and elm, the beech
still lifts its magnificence distinct and unrivalled,
and even the crown of its concluding moments has a
richness superior to that of any other. Leaves, it
may be well to say, assume these beautiful tints in
autumn, through failure of their power to appropriate

66 THE BEECH.

only the carbon of the atmosphere during the per-
formance of the process of assimilation. They become,
in consequence, super-oxygenised, and the oxygen,
as in other cases, manifests its presence by giving an
unaccustomed brightness of tint. We are apt to
speak of the fading of the leaves in autumn ; it would
be more truthful to speak of it as the autumnal
painting. Very prone are we also to connect the
idea of " autumnal foliage " with trees only, over-
looking the fact that multitudes of herbaceous plants,
including many of the most inconsiderable weeds of
the wayside, are gifted with an equal beauty in the
decline of life. No tint in nature excels the roseate
amber of the October foliage of the silver-weed,
Potentilla Anserina; docks and sorrels glow with
vivid crimson, and the hedge-parsley turns its fern-
like leaves to the colour of a king's mantle. Nature
delights here, as everywhere else, to echo her great-
est things in her least ones. No blind heart was
that which in old time said that Pan, the god of
material nature, took for his wife the nymph Echo,
he playing on his sevenfold pipe, wrought from the
reeds by the river, while she gave response to every
harmony.

Lastly should we note the fruit of the beech. In
May, soon after the young leaves are open, the tree
is ornamented with ten thousand globular clusters,
downy, and containing all the essentials of a flower ;
by the time that the Hlac stars of the Michaelmas-

THE BEECH. 67

daisy begin to shine in the garden, these are followed
by prickly pods the size of an acorn, and analogous
to acorns in structure. That part which in the
fruit of the oak, is a smooth-edged and hemispherical
cup, in the beech is four-valved, the valves recurving
like those of a chestnut ; the acorn itself is repre-
sented by a triangular brown nut, with margins
almost as sharp as the blade of a knife. In Spring
these three-cornered seeds are prone to sprout, and
among the mosses on the hedge-bank, beeches, like
children at play, are found beginning the world
anew.

Beeches are not like oaks, the resort of many
living creatures ; the number of insects frequenting
them is comparative few, nor are these trees much
sought after by the nest-builders. A pleasing
association clings to the beech nevertheless, such
as we have with scarcely another, for as long as
children's voices are lovely to human souls, will be
their trill of " the woodpecker tapping the hollow
beech-tree." Naturalists find in connection with the
beech quite another class of objects, namely, fungi
of uncommon kinds, one in particular, which in
autumn appears upon the trunks, and from its re-
semblance to sprays of white coral, has been clas-
sically named Hydnum coralloides. The truffle,
precious to epicures, and the morel, another dainty
for the table, are also frequent inhabitants of the
beech- wood. So beautiful are the plans and mar-

p 2

68 THE BEECH.

shallings of nature ! If to one tree be given good
fruit, another excels in foliage ; if one be tall and
soaring, another gives sweet amplitude of shade,
touching the earth with the tips of its long arms.
Like the cities of a great empire, every one is noted
for a merit and a suite of qualities peculiarly its own;
and for absolute similarity we seek in vain.

Economically considered, the beech is noted for
supplying wood which, when green, is harder than
that of any other British timber-tree. When the
tree has grown in good soil, and upon plains, it has
a reddish tinge ; but that from individuals grown in
poor soils, and upon mountains, is whitish. Dried,
it is close-grained and brittle. In England, at the
present time, beech- wood is chiefly used for making
bedsteads and chairs ; it is in demand also for
panels of carriages, and for various minor purposes
in cabinet-making, turnery, etc. Yery much of the
common stained furniture used in modern dwellings
is from the same source. Beech of small size, or of
short and crooked stem, is the least valuable of all
timber. Whenever a straight and clean trunk is
wanted, such as alone is meritorious in the eyes of
the timber merchant, the tree requires to be drawn
up by others of its own species, many individuals
being planted in a clump, or by some other of nearly
equal rate of growth, such as the sweet or Spanish
chestnut. It succeeds best when composing planta-
tions unmixed with anything else. For hedgerows

THE BEECH. 69

a solitary beech is one of the most undesirable of
trees, the density of the shade being very hurtful to
neighbouring crops and to fences, and the wood, for
the reason above given, being of little value except
for fuel. In this respect the wood is excellent, and
the green wood is generally preferred to that which
is dry. Burned green, it produces heat and light
relatively to beech burned dry, as 1181 is to 1540.
In Paris it is very extensively consumed under the
name of bois d'Andelle. For long and narrow
hedges, such as are required for the shelter of
gardens, the beech has no equal among deciduous
trees, since through its power of retaining its dead
brown leaves throughout the winter, which is always
the case with this tree while young, it answers all
the purposes of an evergreen. The roots . do not
descend deeply into the soil, but spread to a con-
siderable distance; the rootlets, however, are not
nearly so numerous as in the ash and the elm, so that
the injury done to the vegetation above them is much
less. Young plants, favourably placed, will reach
the height of ten feet in five years, and 20 or 25
feet in ten years. The full growth is obtained in 60
or 80 years, though the tree will live to a hundred
or a hundred and fifty years, and perhaps longer.

THE ELM.

WHETHEB tlie elm be truly an ancient Briton, or a
tree originally from south-eastern Europe, is an
open question. Like the chestnut and several others,
it has been a resident in our island from time
immemorial ; there is reason to believe, nevertheless,

THE ELM. 71

that it is not one of those trees which, with the oak
and the pine, can claim to be absolutely indigenous —
that is to say, growing upon British soil as one of
the original gifts of nature, instead of owing its
importation to the hand of man. The subject to
which this question forms an opening is one of the
most curious and interesting that botanists and
physical geographers have to consider. It involves
not only the natural laws and the accidental pro-
cesses by which plants have been diffused over the
face of the earth, but the problem of the primitive
seats of particular species. Looking at the ancient
forests and the immortal meadows, at the lilies that
brighten the quiet pools and river-inlets, far away
in the most secret solitudes of the country; or at
the saxifrages that sprinkle the mountain-slopes
with their beautiful stars of gold or delicately-
speckled white, — we think most naturally that these
things, or at all events that the plants which were
their ancestors and progenitors, have occupied these
self-same spots ever since the beginning. And
doubtless this is true of very many of the forms of
life that surround us. But very many others have as
certainly been derived from localities more or less
distant. Migration has been no less steady on the
part of plants, sometimes as the result of natural
causes, sometimes under the influence of man, and
this, upon his part, either knowingly or uncon-
sciously,— migration, we say, has been no less steady

72 THE ELM.

on the part of plants than emigration has been with
our own species. The colonising of new lands in
ancient times and in modern ones has in every age
had its silent but energetic parallel among plants.
Such migration is still in progress, and perhaps
more vigorously than ever before : it would seem
that whatever man does, the unconscious portion of
living nature does likewise — that whichever of the
two takes the initiative, the other cannot choose but
follow suit.

Numbers of our common English weeds have, by
the accidents of commerce, been conveyed of late
years to distant countries, and in several cases have
established disastrous empire ; many pretty flowers,
on the other hand, have also travelled in the wake of
civilization. In certain localities in our own island,
where once were only brambles and hedge-nettles,
now we see the quaint blossoms of the American
touch-me-not, or the golden quadrangles of the
evening-primrose. Even in our conservatories there
are many similar instances of the wonderful love of
travel that pertains to plants. Among the orchids
of the tropics frequently springs up that most sweet
and tender little trefoil, the sleepy yellow oxalis of
the Mauritius ; and in one hothouse, at least, that
might be named, comes up every year, unsown and
of its own amiable accord, that beautiful blue-spiked
G-ymnostachyum which has been dedicated, in its
second name, to Mr. Cuming. A large book might

THE ELM. 73

be written upon the subject of these curious wander-
ings ; another upon the confraternity that has been
instituted among the different countries of the earth
by the deliberate transfer of their productions from
one to the other. How much does Europe owe to
Asia ! How much to America ! How largely in
turn does the new world stand indebted to the old !
The walnut and the lilac came first from Persia ; the
camellia is from Japan ; the vine from the shores of
the Caspian. Wheat and barley are from the same
opulent part of south-western Asia which tradition
declares to have been the birthplace of the human
family; cucumbers and melons ripened their first
fruits beneath the sun of India; rosemary seems
aboriginal to the northern shores of the Mediter-
ranean. Extending our survey to America, we find
that for the inestimable potato we must thank
Brazil; the same great region has enriched our
gardens with countless flowers of the rarest beauty ;
the ancient world has sent hither, in beautiful recom-
pense, two of the most valuable of plants — those,
namely, which yield coffee and rice. These are but
two or three instances out of a thousand that might
be cited; the narration of all would run abreast of
the history of human enterprise, and, at the same
moment, of nature's fair docility — a quality we
should never forget or overlook. For what would
the world have been had trees and plants and flowers
sullenly refused to grow except in the very spots

74 THE ELM.

where they were first deposited ? Everywhere the
soil gives willing nutriment; and though the in-
clemencies and the asperities of certain climates do
certainly prevent the universal extension of plants,
the capacity of self-adaptation to an immense variety
of latitude and longitude, remains one of the most
striking facts in physiology, and one of the finest
illustrations of the Divine munificence. England,
owing to this power of self-accommodation on the
part of plants, is now the permanent flower-show of
the whole world. True, it is through the ingenuity
of the florist that very many plants are alone per-
suaded to dwell with us and to enjoy life ; his success
in reconciling them to their new abode comes, how-
ever, of their primitive flexibility under kind treat-
ment. Plants, like women and chameleons, wax
bright or become dim according to the light that is
cast upon them; — yet not alone by reason of the light,
but because of the sweet reflecting mystery within.
In the questioned native country of the elm-tree
is involved, accordingly, no new or solitary idea;
it is simply one of those which constitute the history
of the interchange of hospitalities. In any case,
the tree is so thoroughly rooted in Old England that
now it matters little whether it be an alien or other-
wise. For centuries it has been linked with many
of the happiest thoughts that are the privilege of
Englishmen ; and as long as the glory of old family
mansions and of ancestral avenues shall endure, so

THE ELM. 75

long will the stately elm be a household word. The
great height which the elm attains,, the peculiar and
gradually expanding form of the head, the grand
super-columniation of the pillared branches, and
the massiveness and circularity of the main stem,
are qualities which adapt it more than any other for
an ornament of the park and of the grounds that
immediately adjoin, and more particularly still, for
planting in those duplicate lines which by-and-by de-
velope into the avenue — say, rather, into the living
cathedral nave ; of which, let it be noted, there are
no finer examples possible than in the avenues in
Kensington Gardens, and that majestic one which
sweeps down the slope in front of Eedland Court,
near Bristol, then rises again, graceful as some light
boat upon the waters, every tree a tower of verdure,
illustrious at every season, and when in the pride of
its green summer, and slaking its mighty thirst in
the drowsy sunshine, lifting up our hearts with
delight and admiration. For grand old trees, such
as these elms, like the stars, seem to look down into
our souls, and, resting there, make them partakers
of their own greatness.

Listen, too, to the inhabitants ! Not always a city,
but how often are these beautiful trees, the elms,
the seat of a thousand birds of the dark wing ! The
two things seem so naturally to go together, that
rooks' feathers upon the ground — so black, so clean,
so smooth, so glossy, with their beautiful white and

76

THE ELM.

slender quills — seem almost a produce of the tree
itself. To watch these birds sailing in their calm
squadrons; to note them, too, when busy in the
fields ; yea, even to pick up those fragments of cast
plumage, to me is an ever-recurring pleasure. And
yet it is not because of the elms ; I suppose there is
no human being of civilized race to whom some such
simple thing of nature is not a talisman,

" Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly
bound!"

Botanically, the elm is distinguished by its curious
leaves, simple flowers, and remarkable fruit, or, as it
would be popularly called, remarkable seed. Botanists,

LEAVES OP ELM-TREE.

however, give the name of " fruit " to the ripened
seed and seed-vessel of every plant without distinc-
tion. No matter whether fit to eat or not, whether

THE ELM. 77

hard and dry, or juicy and tempting, this portion of
the plant's produce is still the "fruit," and, made
thus comprehensive, the term becomes an exceed-
ingly convenient one. The peculiarity of the leaves
is that the two sides, or the portions separated by
the midrib, are not only of two different sizes, as
happens in the beech, but that the bases of the two
sides spring from different points. A few examples
of similar structure occur in other families of plants,
but it is nowhere so conspicuous as in the elm.
The lateral veins proceed in straight and parallel
lines (sometimes forking a little), right away to the
margin, as in trees of the oak-tribe; the margins
are deeply and sharply serrated, and the apex runs
out to a fine point. Sometimes there is a second
projection, which is thrown to one side, making it
appear as if we had a leaf and a half combined
into a single blade. Ordinarily, the surface is rough,
though in some varieties quite smooth ; in autumn
the whole • substance changes to a uniform though
rather subdued yellow, and for some time, during
the year's tranquil evening, bathed in the beautiful
light of the declining sun, the tree presents a cheerful
though never a gorgeous spectacle.

It is early in spring, when the elm is in flower,
that the eye is most attracted to its botanical traits.
Often as early as Lent, and certainly by April, the
twigs seem covered with hard black knots, some-
thing like ill-strung beads. Presently, in calm fore-

78 THE ELM.

noons, when the daffodils open their golden cups,
and the almond and the mezereon cover their bare
branches with sweet pink bloom, reminding us of
those happy little children of genius who before they
have been to school, and become leafy with book-
knowledge, play forth verses, and song, and Art ; —
producing, like the birds in spring, not from instruc-
tion, but because they cannot help; — presently,
while these livelier sweet sights invite our hearts,
the dark elm-knots also expand, and then we have
dense round clusters of little vases, tinted brown,
and purple, and green, in delicate intermixture,
while in the midst are lifted up stamens and a ruddy
pistil that seems clipped out of fairy velvet. So
abundant are these pretty flowers, and so deep and
vinous is the hue, that when the sunbeams fall on
the tree, it seems almost to purple the surrounding
air. Up to this time, not a leaf, not an opening leaf-
bud, is to be seen, so that between our eyes and the
pale sky there is nothing but twig and bloom. Talk
not of flowers as born only of the summer. In the
dreariest and coldest seasons that precede there are
always plenty. It is not that flowers are wanting,
but that we have not yet quite learned that seeing,
like conversation, is one of the Fine Arts, the prin-
ciples of which come by nature, but which requires
culture quite as much as our capacity for writing or
working out a sum in arithmetic.

By the time the leaves are completing their green

THE ELM. 79

promise, mingled with, them in countless numbers,
are the fruits into which the pistils have ripened.
Now the ruddy fur is entirely gone, and we have flat
green circular plates with a notch at the summit,
and a seed embedded in the centre, the whole seem-
ing an image in little of those ancient shields that
had a boss in the middle. Hanging upon the tree
they seem green hop-clusters gone astray ; when
they fall to the ground, they lie thick as the chaff on
a threshing-floor. Showiness in the detail of its
parts, the elm is thus not gifted with : yet the aggre-
gate makes amends, and is it not by the aggregate
of our nature that we ourselves desire to be judged ?
Partly, perhaps, because of this little pretension on
the part of the elm to floral beauty, the ancient
Italian gardeners selected it as a living prop for
their vines, giving to the tree which nature had
left with so little glow of ornament, the most ex-
quisite decoration that art could superadd. For
nothing can be more charming than a tree twined
over and festooned with the many-tendrilled vine,
every leaf a model of elegance, and every bunch
the beau-ideal of a fruit. Amid all the varied and
graceful uses to which the foliage of trees has been
applied in Art, — the palm-leaf to form the capital of
the Egyptian pillar, ivy to help in the stone foliage
of the Gothic cathedral, — none perhaps have been
more constant, as none have been more popular, than
the use of the vine-trail. " Vignettes " are so called

80 THE ELM.

because all such little pictures were at one time
surrounded by an engraved vine-wreath, in classi-
cal language called viticula. The selection of the
elin for the purpose above-mentioned gives occasion
to very frequent allusions to the practice by the

PKUIT OF ELM-TREE.

ancient poets, as by Yirgil over and over again in
the Georgics and the Pastorals. It would seem that
in those days, as in the present, lovers forgot
their occupations while thinking of the beloved, for
thus does Corydon chide himself when he wakes
to the consciousness that his appeals are vain : —

Ah, Corydon ! Corydon, quae te dementia cepit ?
Semiputata tibi frondosa vitis in ulmo est.

" Ah, Corydon ! Corydon, what love-fever hath en-
slaved thee ? Half-pruned is thy vine that mantles
in the leafy elm ! " Like a wise man, he decides to

THE ELM. 81

resume his legitimate occupations, "to weave, of
osiers and pliant rushes, such implements as his
work requires : if this Alexis disdains thee, thou shalt
yet find another."

All the preceding remarks apply to the noble tree
populary known as the elm, by botanists called the
small-leaved elm and the London elm, and classically
Ulmus campestris. It is this one also which, in the
south of England, has given its name to one or two
" Elmtons" or "Elm-towns;" another circumstance
indicating its probably exotic origin, since names
of places founded upon that of the elm are very rare,
while names of towns and villages founded on that
of the oak and other undoubted natives are quite fre-
quent. There is one kind of elm which is acknow-
ledged to be indigenous — that one called by botanists
Ulmus montana, and popularly distinguished as the
wych-elm. In all characters except the technical ones
found in the shape of the leaf, and in the structure
of the flowers and fruit, this is a perfectly dissimilar
tree. Instead of being lofty, erect, and with many
tiers of columns that alternately lose and disclose
themselves among the foliage, this one is compara-
tively low in stature, and the tree is disposed
more to the spreading or horizontal mode of growth :
consequently it never attains the handsome figure of
the campestris ; it is unsuited for avenues and colon-
nades, and takes its place better among the middle-
class forest inhabitants. Planted singly, well-grown

G

82 THE ELM.

individuals have, nevertheless, a beauty which is not
to be ignored. The leaves are many times larger
than those of its loftier relative, and are disposed
in so elegant a manner as to give the branches
the appearance of enormous " pinnate leaves," or such
as are formed after the manner of those of the
Eobinia. The long and curving lines produced by
these, and the amplitude of surface, constitute attri-
butes such as few other trees present, and redeem
the wych-elm from any charge of absolute inferiority.
The name, which is a singular one, and is often
misspelled " witch/' from some confusion of ideas
as to the wych-elm and the mountain-ash, — a tree
from time immemorial associated with witchcraft, —
signifies a box or chest, and refers to the ancient use
of the wood for the purposes of the rough cabinet-
maker. Chaucer spells it "wiche," and by Sir
John Mandeville the name is applied to the Ark of
the Covenant, which, as he says ' ' Titus ledde with
him to Borne." It was also used in the sense of
coffin : and coffins, to this day, are largely made of
the wood of the elm. For this purpose, however,
the wood of the campestris is preferred, seeing
that the fibre possesses greater lateral adhesion
and less longitudinal toughness, and consequently
does not crack so much in drying. It is from the
same species (the campestris) that the elm-wood used
in ship-biilding is derived. From its hard and
adhesive nature, and indisposition to crack or split

THE ELM. 83

when exposed to hot sunshine or unfriendly weather,
it is particularly suitable for the blocks and other
wooden furniture of rigging ; the great use of it,
however, is for the keels of ships. The wych-elm
is the species that predominates in the north of
England, as in the south the prevailing species is
the campestris. The two forms abound equally in
flowers, but the wych-elm is much more ready to
ripen its fruit, and the description above given of the
latter product pertains emphatically to it. Herein
again we have a curious bit of collateral evidence
as to the campestris not being aboriginal to England.
For it is inconsistent with the harmony of nature
that a tree or plant should be located in a spot
where the climate would be opposed to its free
multiplication by seed cast from its own boughs.
Such multiplication occurs in the case of the wych-
elm ; but very sparingly or not at all, in England, in
that of the stately small-leaved one. With all
their willingness to accommodate themselves to new
soils and to new countries and latitudes, there is
of course a limit to the endurance of plants, and we
must not be surprised if, when a tree is brought
from a far southern country, as the campestris pro-
bably was, either by the Romans or the Crusaders, it
should be unable so to harden its nature as to ripen
fruit with regularity, and so easily and steadfastly as
to propagate itself without the aid of man, who trans-
orted it from its birthplace.

6 2

84 .THE ELM.

After all, it is "by no means certain that the -wych-
elm is a distinct species. No less than seven differ-
ent varieties of elm are distinguished by the analy-
tical school of botanists. Two species, the campestris
and the montana, seem sufficient, and to include all
the others that have been proposed ; and even these,
as we say, are perhaps resolvable into a single
one. The great question of the present day with
naturalists, " What is a species ?" seems further from
solution than ever. Perhaps the wisest course is to
take things as we find them, and be content with
their beauty and their grace, their strength and
their utilities.

THE LIME.

No tree indigenous to Great Britain presents so
large a variety of pleasing features as the Lime.
Less robust than the oak and chestnut, inferior in
stature to the elm and fir, and in umbrageousness
surpassed by the beech, in its own intrinsic qualities
this beautiful production of nature is nevertheless
on a par with all, and among trees is the analogue of
that happy condition of body which the Greeks
denominated eucrap/co? — neither fat nor lean, but
gracefully intermediate. In the Lime, too, we are.
reminded of that other elegant intellectual habit of
the ancient dwellers by the blue ^gean, which led
them to apply to massive and vigorous plants the
epithet of " male," and to delicate and tender ones
of similar profile and physiognomy, the corresponding
and very expressive one of " female." The Greeks
had but the faintest idea of the existence in plants
of Sex; the clear knowledge of this truth belongs
indeed to the last two centuries. They had sufficient
appreciation, nevertheless, of the universal dualism
of nature, to speak of things in a certain vague and
general manner as masculine and feminine; and
hence to this day, and every day, we have in use
the pretty names " Filix-mas " and " Filix-foemina,"
or shield-fern and lady-fern. Whatever learned no-

86 THE LIME.

menclators may choose to call them, Aspidium or
Lastraea, Asplenium or Athyrium, these beloved old
names will never die, but live for ever, like the
green plumes to which they are bound. Filix-mas
in the sweet recesses of the woodland, making great
circles of curving leaves that remind us of the war-
feathers upon the head of an Indian chief; Filix-
fosmina by the side of the waterfall, and where
streams bubble and gurgle, and the forget-me-nots
put on their turquoises, — what thousands of pleasing
moments have these two admirable plants supplied
to man and woman, after whom they were baptized ;
what thousands, too, of happy moments will they
yet provide ; and though mostly through their own
original and immortal spell — that harpooning power
which such excellent beauty as theirs always pos-
sesses— not alone will it be through this, but me-
diately through their names, which attract and give
life where " brake " and " spleen-wort " are feeble
and voiceless.

In the Lime, we say, the thought of this fine old
habit of the classical ages is awakened, and not less
forcibly than that of the felicitous Greek adjective,
for the lime is one especially of the feminine class of
trees. The oak, the elm, the chestnut, the beech,
are masculine in contour and quality ; the lime, the
birch, the ash, are, like the acacia, no less em-
phatically of feminine look and attributes. Wanting
the light tresses of the acacia, the most feminine of

THE LIMB, 87

all trees ; wanting the white limbs of the " lady-of-
the-woods," the lime is still fashioned after the sweet
ideal which the others disclose in leaf and stem ; and
if we cannot single out, in a mechanical and prosaic
manner, a speciality which shall at once decide its
claim to be placed in the feminine section, that
comes of the perfect manner in which the qualities
of this beautiful tree are intermingled and adjusted.*
Is it not just so with a true woman — the ultimate
and crowning perfection of all those amiable features
and qualities which in plants and flowers have a
sweet foreshining ? For here the heart is appealed
to and satisfied, not alone by red and white, such as
an artist can apply ; not alone by gentle demeanour,
which may be practised for the stage; not alone
either by kindly words and fair courtesies and gene-
rosities, but by that matchless combination of all
these, and many more things, for which there is only
one name — a true woman.

The Lime-tree is less known as a tree of the
woods and forests than of parks, pleasure-grounds,
and gardens. It is very frequent, also, as an orna-
ment of squares and open spaces in towns and cities,
as witness those delightful avenues past which the

* In speaking of the Lime as a " feminine " tree, of course
we do not mean that, like the female plants of willows and
poplars, it is female in sex. Every blossom, and consequently
every individual tree, is in the most perfect sense bisexual,
every blossom having its own pistil and many stamens.

88 THE LIME.

visitor makes Ms way towards Bristol Cathedral.
In the woods, however, occurs, and in some parts of
England very abundantly, a form of this tree with
smaller and thicker leaves, the green of which is at
the same time darker, and which is usually distin-
guished by authors as the Tilia parvifolia, the lime
of the park and garden bearing the name of Tilia
Europcea. In gardens and arboretums is likewise
met with a third form, technically distinguished as
the Tilia grandi folia, the leaves being larger, and
pale and downy upon the under- surface. Whether
these three forms be distinct " species," let those
pronounce who can define what a species is. It is
sufficient for all ordinary and useful purposes to
regard them as strongly-accentuated utterances of a
single idea, and with this understanding alone is it
correct, perhaps, to speak of the Europcea as a native
of our own island. In any case, the Europcea has
been in England so long as now to have become
perfectly naturalised; and the grandifolia, though
far less abundant, and at present still possessing the
aspect of a guest, will no doubt become so likewise
in the course of another century. Centuries, though
they express a great, deal in the history of human
life, simply mark spacious periods in the chronology
of trees. All three forms correspond pretty nearly
in general figure. The tree is symmetrical, with a
solid but rather short trunk j the general outline,
viewing it from a distance, is roundish or ovoid, and,

THE LIME. 89

in aged individuals, the lower branches, which are
then often very massive, are prone to bend to the
earth, the extremities resting upon the grass, so as
to form a green canopy or natural tent, after the
manner of certain varieties of other trees that are
styled " weeping." A lime of this description stands
upon the lawn at Oulton Park, Cheshire, and is
justly esteemed one of the most striking and beau-
tiful trees in the whole county. When favoured by
soil and situation, the dimensions the lime can attain
are prodigious. At Moor Park, there are, or were
a few years ago, some individuals of remarkable
magnificence, the head of one being more than 120
feet in diameter, and the stature more than 100
feet. The trunk of this tree is in circumference
no less than eight yards ! As regards the possible
longevity of the lime, what this is may be judged
from the fact that at Trous, in the Grisons, there
existed, in 1798, a lime which was celebrated as far
back as A.D. 1424, and the age of which, in 1798,
could not have been less than five hundred and
eighty years.

The particular features of the Lime are found in the
crowding of the heart of the tree with brushwood
when somewhat advanced in life ; in the buds, in the
shape of the leaves, in the flowers, the honey, and
the fruit. Lest in referring to the "fruit" there
should arise any misconception, and the sour-juiced
"lime " of the West Indies be thought of, let it be,

90 THE LIME.

understood that that invaluable little lemon is the
produce of an entirely different tree, a first cousin of
the orange and the citron. Let it also be mentioned
here, that the genuine and original name of the
tree we are considering is not Lime, but Line, or
more properly, Linden — a name referring to the
use of the tough bark for making mats and cordage.
Under the name of " bass," or " bast," gardeners
use vast quantities of this material for tying up
plants. Were the tree always called by its much
more elegant and poetical name of Linden — Chaucer's
own name for it on two occasions at least — confusion
would never arise. Even "teil," the name under
which it is mentioned in the Old Testament,* and
which is a modification of Tilia, would be better
than the barbarism, unfortunately now too deeply
established for eradication, which requires us to
write m instead of n. What may be the origin and
signification of the name Tilia itself is obscure. The
word occurs in Virgil and other authors of old Rome ;
but by the Greeks this tree was called (f>i\vpa.
VirgiFs allusions are to the honey yielded so abun-
dantly by the flowers, and to the value of the timber
for purposes where lightness is a great merit. Hence
his expression "tilise leves," the smooth-grained

* If the Hebrew be rightly translated, but the proper
rendering of the word used by the prophet would appear to
be " terebinth." Elsewhere the same Hebrew word is mis-
takenly rendered " oak " and " elm."

THE LIME. 91

lindens. In our own times the wood of the lime-
tree is valued chiefly by the carver. Grinling
Gibbons, the most celebrated wood-carver this
country has produced, usually employed it for his
more delicate and elaborate work, specimens of
which, nearly two hundred years old, are preserved
at Windsor Castle, at Chatsworth, and in St. Paul's
Cathedral, the lines sharp as when they came from
his dextrous fingers. Architects find it serviceable
for models of intended buildings ; the makers of
pianofortes also use it for sounding-boards, since
this wood does not warp with the changes of the
atmosphere. In colour it is pale yellow or whitish ;
in texture it is close-grained, and something in its
composition preserves it free from the attacks of
insects. Baskets and cradles were formerly, and
perhaps are still, manufactured from the young
shoots.

The peculiarity referred to in respect of the twiggy
thicket in the centre of limes that have attained
maturity, is one not observable in any other British
tree. So dense is the mass, that to climb a full-
grown lime is nearly impossible. That which renders
the tree inaccessible to boys and men converts it,
however, into an asylum for little birds, and beautiful
is it to observe how, when chased by a hawk or
other enemy, the fugitives take refuge in the tangle.

No doubt a similar asylum is provided in many
other ways by the kindness of nature, which means,

92 THE LIME.

of course, the goodness of Him who takes care even
of the sparrows j but it is in the lime that, as a large
tree, we are made most powerfully sensible of the
precaution for their safety. I do not know anything
in nature that can give more delight to a kindly and
loving heart than the contemplation of its safeguards.
Food, drink, warmth, sunshine, fresh air, seem to
come almost as a matter of course. Except under
occasional and exceptional conditions and circum-
stances, of these things there is always plenty; but
asylums, places of security and retreat, have to be
specially considered and prepared. Rarely, however,
do we see the preparation set forth conspicuously.
As a rule, that beautiful primitive law of the world
and all its contents, that nothing shall exist for
itself alone, but always for the sake, at the same
time, of some other thing, which shall be the happier
and the richer for it — as a rule, I say, that beautiful
law is here again exemplified and declared. Even
the weed and unconsidered wild-flower, things that
seem useless, become houses of refuge. See how the
little fishes hide their silver coats among the water-
flags ! See how the lizards of the seaside sandhills,
emerald-green and tawny-grey, agile as thought,
quick-eyed and docile as love, dart to the speary
grass that grows like a mimic wheat-field in those
trackless deserts ! " Deserts " did we say ? When
a thousand forms of life, brilliant beetles, cased in
armour of bronze and crimson ; fairy -like butterflies,

THE LIME. 93

whose wings are azure above, and beneath dotted
with jewels ; birds that lift up cheering voices, and
lay down pretty feathers ; — when the golden-flowered
and fragrant galium, and the milk-white cups of the
grass-of- Parnassus, make a desert, then let the haunt
of the lizards receive this name — in England always
thoughtless, and usually unjust.

By its Buds the lime-tree may be told in earliest
spring. While those of the oak are ovoid and
amber-tinted, and those of the beech like little
brown spikes, those of the lime are short and thick,
and of a reddish colour. They nicely illustrate the
facility with which accurate botanical knowledge
may be secured at seasons when many people think
that botany is impossible because there are "no
flowers." True, it is by the flowers and fruit that
the last and most intimate knowledge is gained;
but to neglect the buds and other early and antici-
pative parts, is to behave as if the study of man con-
sisted only in the contemplation of his maturity, and
the golden preparations that make childhood were
unworthy of note. Nothing can be known even
approximately, unless it be watched during develop-
ment. The best part of the history of life is that of
its changes, for wherever life is normal and pro-
gressive, as all life was intended to be, every change
must needs be marked by something new, and rela-
tively more beautiful than any event or state that
has yet been registered. Life that is not so charac-

94 THE LIME.

terised is miscalled ; it is decay, and not vitality —
the grave that is ahead, and not the fruitage life
was always intended to receive. Think back only
the last seven years of your existence ! Can he who
during the lapse of those seven years has not gained
alike in faith in the Infinite "Wisdom and Goodness,
in love of the beautiful in God's works and the
human heart, in the estimation of his friends, and in
his own self-respect, be said to have lived ? I trow
not. Changes he must needs have experienced, but
changes that do not elevate must needs degrade.

The Leaves of the linden form one of its prime cha-
racteristics. They are simple and undivided, in gene-
ral outline roundish, but with the extremity long
drawn-out, and at the base remarkably unsymmetri-
cal. While in the elm the two portions separated by
the midrib spring from different points, here, in the
lime, they spring from the same point, but one
portion is much larger than the other, and a curve
is produced backwards, or in the direction of
the petiole. Hence we get in the lime-tree the
first example of that elegant configuration which
culminates in the leaves of the Begonias, and in
the leaflets of the plants called Epimedium : so
does nature always announce beforehand that which
by-and-by she intends to show forth illustriously.
Everything below the highest form is a prelude
and a proem ; the melody tried first in a minor
key. The stalks which sustain the leaves are longer

THE LIME.

95

than in most other trees, and to this is no doubt
owing much of that ease and lightness of aspect
which places the lime among the feminine trees.
The leaves are smooth also, and glabrous or nearly
so, except in the grandifolia, but in the angles
of the veins, upon the under-surface, may be ob-
served little tufts of light-brown velvet. Spring is

LEAF AND FLOWERS OF LIME-TREE.

not long without them, though they are by no
means among the earliest, and, like several others
which delay their advent, they are uncareful to re-
main to the end. The end, in truth, they never see,
for, though exceptional individuals may retain their
foliage till November, as a rule, the lime leads the
way in surrender to cold ; the track of the yellow-
sandalled autumn is found first amid its boughs.

" Those virgin leaves, of purest vivid green,
Which charm'd ere yet they trembled on the trees,
Now cheer the sober landscape in decay,
The lime first fading"

96 THE LIME.

Next, as to the Flowers. These, in the linden,
differ materially from those of trees which bear cat-
kins, and correspond closely with such blossoms as
those of the apple and pear, wanting only in gaiety
of tint. A glorious spectacle is it to go beneath a
linden in full flower, and look up. This is the only
way in which its amazing wealth of bloom can be
discovered and understood, for such is the disposi-
tion of the foliage and of the flower-peduncles, that
at a little distance the tree seems to be no more
than dappled or variegated; viewed, on the other
hand, from below, it is a very heaven of fragrant
honey-cups. That favoured characteristic of the
violet which has made this flower, with the poets,
the emblem of modesty, is not more marked in the
little hedge-bank blossom than in the deep-hearted
and lady-like linden, which surpasses, too, all trees
that grow in England in benevolence to the bees.
Who, in regard to this, does not remember the good
old (Ebalian in Virgil ? — " Here planting among the
shrubs, white lilies, , vervain, and esculent poppies,
he equalled, in his contented mind, the wealth of
kings. The first was he to pluck the rose of spring,
and the first to gather the fruits of autumn ; and
even when sad winter split the rocks with frost, and
bridled the current of the streams with ice, yes, in
that very season was he cropping the locks of the
soft acanthus.* Lindens had he, and pines, in
* Several plants, with the ancients, bore the name of

THE LIME. 97

great abundance; he, therefore, was the first to
abound with prolific bees, and to strain the frothy
honey from the well-pressed combs." *

Our English poets freely refer to the honey of the
lime, especially the class of writers represented in
Mrs. Hemans and L. E. L. Cowper adverts to it —

" The lime at dewy eve
Diffusing odours."

And, though not in relation to this particular cir-
cumstance, we have the tree mentioned also by
Lord Byron, in " Lara." Prose writers likewise
not infrequently introduce the lime, as much for
this reason, no doubt, as for any other, when they
would suggest ideas of graceful form and of a
delicately-scented atmosphere; Fenelon, for example,
in his description of the enchanted island of Calypso.
To a mind of pure and elegant tastes, the lime always
appeals powerfully, and perhaps it would be no error
of judgment to deem preference for it one of the
instincts of an amiable and tender disposition, such
as admires the grand and stately, but still best loves

Acanthus. That one to which the name is here applied,
appears to have been that beautiful and curious variety of
the common holly, which, instead of bearing bracelets of
scarlet berries, produces yellow ones. That it was certainly
a berried and evergreen shrub, appears from the allusions in
Eclogue, iv. 20, and in Georgic ii. 119.

* Georgic iv. 131-141. See also iv. 183, where the bees
" feed on the glowing crocus and the luscious lime."

98 THE LIME.

the little and the pretty. When the bees have
access to large numbers of limes, so that the storage
in their waxen cities has been derived principally
from this source, the flavour and quality of the
honey are particularly good, and quite as marked as
when these creatures feed extensively upon the
heather, or upon aromatic plants of the Labiate
kind, to which latter is owing the peculiar flavour
of the honey of Narbonne. In some parts of Lithu-
ania there are forests composed almost exclusively
of lime-trees. The bees gather their harvest with
rapidity, and the combs being almost immediately
removed from the hives, the flavour is preserved
pure, and the inhabitants realize large sums by the
sale of what the insects have so assiduously col-
lected.

The whole subject of the production of honey by
flowers is very pleasing. There are few probably
by which a less or greater quantity is not yielded,
since the presence of this substance appears to serve
as an attraction to many little creatures of tender
wing. Rifling the blossom, and rambling about in
it, they help to convey the pollen from the stamens
to the pistil, and thus unconsciously help forward
the great function of reproduction. How beautiful
are these various steps in the exquisitely-adjusted
economies of nature ! The earth, shone on to-day
by the self-same stars which delighted the eyes of
the first members of mankind, is enriched also with

THE LIME. 99

the descendants of the identical trees and flowers
which excited their curiosity and allured their affec-
tions; and descendants of the now existing indi-
viduals will no doubt carry on for ever, in one un-
broken stream, the loveliness that every summer
renews. How is this effected? Solely and abso-
lutely through the instrumentality of the apparatus
we call the " flower." The flower, in turn, needs
that its parts shall be lightly touched, as when
the musician runs his hand over the harp-strings ;
they who touch so tenderly are the unconsidered
little visitors and dwellers whose presence is often
thought an intrusion ; and they, it would appear,
are invited and sustained by the nectar in the
heart of the flower. Usually the honey is not
placed in any special receptacle, but round about the
feet of the stamens and pistil, just as we see green
mosses forming a bank round the base of the trunk
of an old tree in the wood. There are plenty of
examples, however, of such special cups or vases for
it, and these are of the most beautiful and curious
diversity. In the crown-imperial the vases are like
round white eyes, six in every flower, or one to
every petal ; in the grass-of- Parnassus they con-
stitute the palms of little hand-like bodies, every
one of which is provided with an uneven number of
fingers, usually either eleven or thirteen, so that the
central one shall stand higher than the others, which
gradually diminish in height as they are further and

H 2

100 THE LIME.

further from the middle. In the aconite, again, the
honey-cups resemble two little birds, and in the
hellebore they remind us of certain bivalve sea-
shells. The lime-tree is one of those plants in which
no special provision is made for the care of the
honey : in botanical language, although brimming
with nectar, the flowers are unprovided with " nec-
taries." Keen was the appreciation of the old na-
turalist who adopted this classic term into the lan-
guage of phytology. The pleasant beverage feigned
in the most ancient times to be the drink of the
gods, might well have its appellation transferred to
that which gives new charm to the loveliness of the
flower. VirgiPs immortal description of the bees
must furnish us yet once a,gain with an illustration : —
" Some address themselves to the gathering of food,
and by fixed agreement have their occupation in the
fields ; some deposit within the inclosure of the hive
Narcissus' tears,* and clammy gum from the bark

* The flowers of the daffodil and other species of the genus
Narcissus are provided, as all who know these plants will
recollect, with a peculiar cup in the centre. These cups,
mythology tells us, contain the tears of the fabled youth
whose name they bear, —

" Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring,"
and are beautifully alluded to by Milton, in Lycidas,—

" Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies "

THE LIME. 101

of trees, for the foundation of the combs ; then build
into arches the viscid wax. These, on the other
hand, bring up and tend the younger ones, the hope
of the nation ; others again, distend the cells with
liquid nectar." f

One other circumstance connected with the lime
deserves mention : it is one of the trees upon which
the mistletoe occasionally grows. The limes in the
Home Park, Windsor, are, or were a few years ago,
richly adorned with it ; there are other examples in
Bushy Park, and in the avenue at Hampton Court,
and at Penshurst Park, in Kent, with doubtless very
many more in different parts of the country. History
connecting the mistletoe so especially with the oak,
it is well to know that this famous parasite grows
upon nearly a score of other kinds of tree, including
the maple, the ash, the poplar, the apple and pear,
the hawthorn, the white-beam, the service, the willow,
the hazel-nut, the Robinia, the holly, and the walnut.
In summer we seldom notice the mistletoe. C'on,-
cealed by the foliage of the tree it inhabits, not until
autumn has stripped all away, and winter has ren-
dered the woods transparent, and the splendours of
the ivy and holly are disclosed, do we discover its
presence. Then how beautiful the contrast of its
innumerable green quills and glistening pearls, with
the dark-brown armour around and below — all of
those stalwart foresters that lies open to view. Then,
f Georgic iv. 158-164.

102 THE LIME.

too, how beautifully is suggested to us the value
and excellence of deciduous things, for were all
mantles to remain for ever, how much should we
remain unconscious of! Light and summer, that
reveal so much, hide even more. Darkness, that we
think so dreadful, takes us away from earth to the
heavenly lamps, and that which till now was silent,
•begins to speak.

THE POPLAE AND THE WILLOW.

INNUMERABLE phenomena in nature testify to its har-
mony with man and all that pertains to him.
Every circumstance of his animal life, from the
cradle to the edge of the grave, is in one way or
another mirrored and duplicated; no matter of

J04 THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW.

surprise is it, then, that at every turn we are
met by examples of close relationships among trees
such as are calculated to remind us of the ties which
constitute families among ourselves. One of the
special occupations of the botanist is to determine
the affinities which plants bear to one another ; to
notice, that is to say, the resemblances which subsist
among them, and to bring together, as far as pen
and paper, and the hortus siccus and the botanic
garden will allow, those which most nearly resemble
in essentials. This is the " delightful task " for
which, after rearing " the tender shoot," he finds
a long life-time give opportunity for only a very
partial performance. It is pure and enduring en-
joyment nevertheless, since every day and hour he
learns more and more the significance of that
beautiful word Unity. ,

By reason of these concordances and agreements
it is well that in our present survey the Poplar-
tree and the Willow should be taken together.
Members of a great family distinguished from all
others by producing a portion, if not the whole, of
their flowers, in those pretty pendulous clusters
called " catkins," these two are still isolated and
characterised by a peculiarity of their own. While
all other species of the " Amentiferae " have
their stamens and pistils produced from different
buds upon the same tree, these two races, the
poplars and the willows, have their two kinds of

THE POPLA.R AND THE WILLOW. 105

flowers not only developed from different buds, but
the two sets of buds are confined to different
trees ! In a word, to adopt the technical language
of the schools, poplars and willows are " dioecious,"
while all other trees that bear catkins, or those
at least which belong to the Amentiferse, are
"monoecious." These terms were contrived by
Linngeus in that happy spirit of poetry which gives
force and feeling to all true science, the idea
conveyed in them being that trees are houses, the
inhabitants of which, like human beings, are male
and female, the monoecious kinds answering to
households such as contain representatives of both
sexes, while the dioecious kinds are noted for their
inhabitants being respectively of only one sex.
There are plenty of herbaceous plants which illus.
trate the same economy, especially in the class de-
nominated " sedges/' and of these also there are
examples both of the monoecious and of the
dioecious structure. Some botanists are inclined
to consider these plants, poplars, willows, sedges,
and the like, of higher position in the scale of nature
than such as are bisexual, or formed like the
apple and rose. If resemblance to the animal
economy in respect of sex be paramount, of course
there can be no demur ; but resemblance to animal
powers and functions exists in plants under so many
different aspects, and is often so rich and startling,
that no particular resemblance can be selected

106

THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW.

without ignoring equally just claims by many
others. What, for instance, becomes of the sen-
sitive-plant, with its marvellous susceptibility to
touch ? what of those strange vegetable carnivora,
the Dionaea and the Sundew, the Nepenthes and

WILLOW. FEMALE FLOWERS.

WILLOW. — MALE FLOWERS.

the Sarracenia, — plants which are so organized as
to capture insects, and remind us of predatory
birds and quadrupeds ? No single plant, no race
of plants, is in all particulars pre-eminent, nor is any
one kind nearest to man, or even to animal life.
Nature is everywhere the echo and solution of its

THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW. 107

lord and master; therefore touches him, in its
phenomena, at every point.

Not only do the poplar and the willow agree,
among1 the Amentiferae, in being dioecious, and thus
differ from all their congeners ; their fruit also is
perfectly distinct from that of every other species of
the family, and by this alone, in the time of its ripe-
ness, may they be identified. While the oak, the
beech, and the hazel, yield some kind of acorn or
nut, round as an egg, or curiously angled; and
while the birch and the alder supply a mimic cone,

POPLAB FLOWEES.

imitating, afar off, the sculptured produce of the
pine-tree : these two, the willow and the poplar,
prepare clusters of little capsules, from which, as
soon as they burst, is discharged an immense quantity
of the whitest vegetable silk. Unfortunately, the
fibre is so short as to render it unavailable for
manufacturing into thread, or yarn such as would be
adapted to the requirements of the weaver ; in its
usefulness to give softness to cushions and pillows
it is nevertheless unequalled and unapproached.

108 THE POPLAE AND THE WILLOW.

The clusters of poplar seed-capsules are exactly of
the figure and general appearance of bunches of
currants, though usually much longer, attaining
ordinarily four or five inches. While green, every
capsule is perfectly spherical, bursting in due time,
by a vertical crack, into two little halves. The
capsules of the willow, on the other hand, are
densely packed ; individually they are conical, and,
when they burst, the two canoe-shaped and sharply-
pointed halves are gracefully recurved. There is a
further distinction found in the clusters of stamen-
flowers. The little scales by which the stamens are
shielded are in the willows smooth-edged, but in
the poplars torn and ragged ; and while in willows
the stamens seldom exceed two in number, in pop-
lars they are at least eight, and sometimes many
more.

These delicate distinctions are rendered necessary
in botany by the frequently strong resemblances
which subsist in the architecture and in the profile
of plants, judging by which alone, we are liable
to be led into error. Moreover, by carefully
observing them, many things which apparently
have little connection, prove in the end to be most
intimately related, and a capital hint is offered as to
precipitancy in decision with regard to matters far
more noble and vital than trees. How common, for
instance, the belief that the name of "poplar"
applies legitimately only to that tall and spire-like

THE TOPLAJR AND THE WILLOW. 109

and most unsociable tree which is everywhere seen
towering aloft in suburban gardens, or forming a
kind of colonnade in the hedgerow. Yet this is
only one out of many kinds of poplars, and neither
the most important kind nor, strange to say, of
the same antiquity as the others. The " Lombardy
poplar," by which name this spire-shaped one
should always be called, is only a variety of the
good old-fashioned " Black." Like the spire-
shaped variety of the common yew, and the
similar -variety of the furze-bush, it is a sport of
nature in comparatively recent times, showing over
again, how full alike of play and flexibility is that
beautiful old " spirit of the woods " which the
ancient poets half-deified, converting the trees into
a sisterhood of dryads. Though by no means a
pleasing object when standing alone, the Lom-
bardy poplar, judiciously intermingled with other
trees, gives an air that no other so well supplies,
conferring upon the grove that same beautiful
addition which is given to the view of a distant
city by its towers and spires. Contrasts lie at
the heart of all our enjoyments, and it is only by
such intermixtures of umbrageousness and slender
loftiness that the beau ideal of sylvan charm is
originated in wood and forest.

The poplars, botanically so called, comprise not
only this common spire-like tree and its widely-
branching parent, the " Old English black," but

110 THE POPLAE AND THE WILLOW.

also the abele and the aspen. Besides these Euro-
pean, or at all events Old World forms, there being
reason to believe them originally Asiatic, there are
several species indigenous to North America. All,
except the latter, agree in the curious peculiarity of
having their petioles laterally compressed at the ex-
tremity next to the blade. Hence arises that in-
cessant fluttering which has made a proverb of the
aspen, and which finds mention even in the
sacred records, though apparently connected,
through a mistranslation, with an entirely differ-
ent tree. " When thou shalt hear a sound of going
in the tops of the mulberry-trees," should by
right be "in the tops of the poplar-trees." Placed
alongside of the leaves of their near relations, the
willows, poplar leaves are found to be, as a rule,
scarcely longer than broad, where widest ; the
leaves of willow-trees, on the other hand, as a rule,
excel considerably in length. It is worthy of notice
too that while the leaves of poplar-trees are exceed-
ingly prone to become vegetable skeletons, lying
as they do, in this condition, often by hundreds
where poplar-trees abound, and found even in sub-
urban gardens, those of the willow decay in every
part at once, and yield none of the delicate tracery
so remarkable in the others. Lastly, there is a curious
contrast in the aspiring tendency of the poplar,
and in the " weeping " inclination, not only of the
famous willow of Babylon, but in several other re-

THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW. Ill

preservatives of the germs. The last-named feature
has obtained for the willow a place in the " Language
of Flowers." When the poet would picture sadness,
he needs only to cite this drooping and sorrowful
tree ; the very name is a synonyme for grief
beyond assuaging. How deep the meaning in the
description of poor, forsaken, desolated Dido, —

In such a night,

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand,
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love
To come again to Carthage.

In pictures such as these we have the sign of the
true and immortal Poet, who, without wordy de-
lineation of the varied passions that may fill the
heart, presents to us, in a single phrase, a perfect
idea of its condition. Even the erect kinds of
willow have none of that pretty cheerfulness about
them which belongs to most other trees. Although
the springing of the willows " by the water-
courses" is used as an illustration of gladness
and prosperity, they seem by nature intended for
association rather with times of mournfulness than
of joy. Possibly this may arise from their being so
very generally located by the water-side, on the
banks of slow streams and rivers, where the mind
becomes attuned to melancholy, and even the reeds
convey utterances of dejection. Hence, it would
appear, the frequent connection, both of the willow
and the poplar, with events that have a hue of

112 THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW.

trouble, in the legends bequeathed to us by the
ancient fabulists. When the sisters of Phaeton,
inconsolable for the untimely end of their brother,
were by the pitying deity transformed into trees,
poplars were made the memorial, and to this day,
every spring, the tears of those unhappy ladies re-
appear upon the opening leaf-buds. It was upon
a poplar that (Enone found the inscription left by
her faithless lover ; it is with a poplar that Yirgil
connects his exquisite image of the nightingale
robbed of her nest : —

Qualis populea moerens Philomela sub umbrS
Amissos queritur fetus, quos durus arator
Observans nido implumes detraxit : at ilia
Met noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et moestis late loca questibus implet.

" As the mourning nightingale within a poplar shade
grieves for her lost young, which the ruthless
ploughman, espying in her nest, has stolen away
unfledged. But she weeps throughout the night,
and seated on a bough, still renews her sorrowful
song, and fills all the air with piteous wailings."

Similarly, with the willow we find connected the
fable of Arethusa, whose bathing in a stream over-
hung with these trees, mingled with poplars, led
to the events that caused her transformation into
the spring which retains her name to the present
moment. Transferring our interests from the
remote past to the days of Hamlet, how beautifully

THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW.

113

again is the willow introduced in the account of the
death of Ophelia : —

" There is a willow grows ascant the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

* * * * *

There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ;
When down her weedy trophies, and herself,
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide ;
And, mermaid- like, awhile they bore her up :
Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes ;
As one incapable of her own distress;
Or like a creature native and indued

I

114 THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW.

Unto that element. But long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink.
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay,
To muddy death."

The great botanical distinction between the wil-
low and poplar, compared with all other trees of
ordinary occurrence, has been mentioned above.
The discrimination of the particular kinds of wil-
low is not so easy, the species being numerous.
The larger kinds, natives of Great Britain, may be
told by their very long and narrow leaves, tapering
to each extremity. In the common willow, Salix
fragilis, so named from the readiness with which the
young branches break away from the main bough,
the leaves are green, without admixture of grey ; in
the white willow, Salix alba, every leaf is clothed
on both surfaces with white and silky hairs, which
give it the hoary appearance alluded to by the
poets.

Besides these, there is the shining bay-leaved
willow, Salix pentandra, which has all the gloss and
lustre of some fine evergreen, and exudes an aromatic
odour from glands along the edges of the leaves.
The large honey yellow catkins contribute also to
render this tree very ornamental in early summer.
The poplars are few in number, and are at once
told by the shape and colour of the leaves. Those
of the abele, or white poplar, are angularly toothed
or lobed, and covered upon the under-surface with a

THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW.

115

"WHITE POPLAR. BLACK POPLAE.

116 THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW.

grey and felty substance : in the black poplar they
are perfectly glabrous, nearly triangular, and with-
out lobes : in the aspen they are likewise glabrous,
circular, or nearly so, and with coarse indentations.
The epithet "black," is applied to the kind of poplar
so designated not because of actual nigritude in any
part, but as an antithesis to "white," the well-deserved
epithet of the abele. A similar antithesis gives the
name of " white" to certain varieties of grapes; and
of " black -thorn " to the snowy-flowered sloe : the
epithet in this latter case signifying leafless, as op-
posed to leafy. Whether all three of the European
poplars be aboriginally and veritably British is, after
all, not quite decided. These trees extend so far
to the east, and so early attracted the attention of
travellers and transplanters, that it is quite possible,
as above remarked, that they may have been intro-
duced in the first place from Asia. Support is
furnished -to this idea by the etymology of the name,
which would seem to be radically identical with
" peepul," the name given in India to the sacred
fig, Ficus religiosa, and which would be extended
to the poplar because of the resemblance, as to gene-
ral figure, in the leaf, though the trees are not in
any degree related in regard to structure.

The wood of the poplar is soft, light, and
whitish or pale yellow. Hence it is of little use in
the arts, except for certain descriptions of toys.
For the floors of apartments in houses, however, it is

THE POPLAE AND THE WILLOW.

117

well suited, not only from its colour, but from the
facility with which it is scoured, and the slowness
with which it catches fire and burns. In this last
respect it is exactly the reverse of deal. From its
softness, it cannot be expected to be very durable;

NET-LEAVED WILLOW.

but this defect is only marked when it is exposed
to the changes of the external atmosphere or to
injury by water. Nails can be driven into it near the
edge without danger of splitting, so that it is par-
ticularly well adapted for the manufacture of

118 THE POPLAE AND THE WILLOW.

packing-cases. The wood of the aspen is much
more combustible .than that of the other English
poplars ; and that of the nigra is much liked for
bowls, platters, and butchers' trays.

The willows, that is to say, the " crack " .willow,
Salix frag His, and the white willow, Salix alia, are
probably, in- the full sense of the word, indigenous.
Our English climate suits these trees well, as also
the smaller kinds familiarly known as osiers and
withies, which useful contributions to the necessities
of the basket-maker are chiefly furnished by the Sa-
lix viminalis. How long basket-making from osiers
has been practised in our island, may be judged of
from the fact that the very word " basket " is, with
a trifling difference in the spelling, the very same
that was used here two thousand years ago. No one
after this will demur to the osier, at all events, being
native. The word in question is one of the very few
ancient British terms that have lived into our own
modern English. It is preserved in its Celtic form
by the Eoman poet Martial, one of whose epigrams,
freely rendered, runs as follows : —

From Britain's painted sons I came,
And " basket " is my barbarous name ;
But now I am so modish grown,
That Borne would claim me for her own !

The shields and coracles of the ancient Britons
were also made of wicker, osier- work having appa-
rently been with this rude and simple people just

THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW. 1 19

what papyrus-work was with the ancient Egyptians.
It is this self-same plant which, with the Salix
Caprcea, and one or two other species, has now for
ages borne the name of " palm/' or more properly
" palm- willow/' being usually in full bloom on
Palm- Sunday, and thus available for use where the
ancient emblematic practice of carrying or " strow-
ing " palm-branches cannot be carried out with the
leaves of the genuine tree. The veritable palm is
used upon the shores of the Mediterranean ; as we
recede northwards, other plants must needs be
substituted, and at last, in England, the palm-willow
proves efficient.

" In Rome, upon Palm- Sunday,

They bear true palms ;
The cardinals bow reverently,

And sing old psalms.
Elsewhere those psalms are sung

'Mid the olive branches ;
The holly-bough supplies their place

Among the avalanches."

So it continues : every different climate and country
supplying for the occasion some cheerful stalk of
green or yellow ; England in its turn contributing
the willow. Rosalind was acquainted with this tree
when she entered the house exclaiming — " See
what I have found upon a palm ! "

Other important uses subserved by the genus
Salix are its contribution of an excellent wood, in

120 THE POPLAK AND THE WILLOW.

the forms called all/a and RusseHiana, whicli last is
a variety of thefragilis; and of that valuable tonic
medicine called salicine, extracted by chemical pro-
cess from the bark of the Russelliana and some
others, and which has been found equally efficacious
with quinine, extracted from "Peruvian bark/'
which is supplied in turn by various species of
Cinchona. Even a strong infusion of willow-bark
in boiling water, left to stand with the bark in it
until cold, is nearly as efficacious as the elaborately
prepared salicine itself; and in rural districts might
often be advantageously employed without the
trouble and expense of " sending for the doctor."
The wood, which is elastic, tough, and durable, and
not liable to split by any sudden shock, is much
used for lining the rough carts and barrows used for
the conveyance of stone: it is excellent also for
various applications in connection with machinery.

THE YEW.

IN strong contrast with all other trees indigenous
to the British islands, by reason of its poisonous
foliage, stands, the sombre yew, Taxus baccata.
Were not a single example of deleterious properties
to exist among our trees, it would at least be in
exception to the remarkable and significant rule
that everything in nature shall have its dreary side.
Thank God, it is left to our own option to turn
from the darkness to the light, and to shelter below
branches that are not only innocent but liberal,
Who would expect that among grasses, the sweet
pasture of innumerable kine, and in their larger
forms, the source of corn, there is yet one to be
found with the taint of poison in it; — and that
abreast of the lilies there is a flower freighted with

122 THE YEW.

death ? Such, however, is the fact; and darnel and
colchicum are but illustrations and prefigurements,
in their respective provinces, of the mournful truth
that comes out so strongly in the consideration of
the yew. Not that the berries are poisonous, for
these, though viscid and with no fine flavour to
recommend them, are eaten with impunity; it is in
the leaves that the hurtful juices are contained, after
the same manner as in the laurel, the little plums
produced by which are innocuous, though extract
prepared from the leaves is speedily fatal. Probably
it is in some measure from this poisonous quality
that the yew has been so often associated with death
and churchyards : —

" Cheerless, unsocial plant, that loves to dwell
Mid skulls and coffins, epitaphs and tombs."

Remember, however, that it is man who has placed
it in such localities. Nature gives the yew a
very different abiding-place from the cemetery ;
and rightly viewed and understood, perhaps the
yew may prove after all, notwithstanding its pos-
session of deadly sap, to be a tree that should con-
tribute ideas rather of cheerfulness than of mourn-
ing. Upon rugged limestone scars and cliffs,
where nothing else, save a little ivy, can establish
anchorage, the yew is often seen clinging, as if
bound to the rock with clamps of iron. Well-nigh
flattened against the perpendicular face of the

THE YEW. 123

stone, and with the merest ledge or crevice for its
feet, it holds itself unchanged for centuries, and is
the most imposing picture nature affords of imper-
turbable endurance. So, too, upon many a remote
hill-side, beaten and ravaged by tempests ; expos-
ure to the wrath of the elements seems congenial,
and life in the midst of perils to be joy and strength.
Once a year, at least, all evergreen trees are
decked with light and pretty shades of verdure, in-
dicating the flow of their annual tide of life ; the yew,
like the rest, is found changing with the seasons,
and not only in the spring, but emphatically, when
the fruit, looking as if wrought of ruby, crimsons
before the last sunshine of the autumn. Instead
of an emblem of death and sorrow, the yew should
stand, therefore, as the representative of energy and
the impregnable, and I cannot but think that some
such view of its true significance must have actu-
ated those who either laid the foundations of their
churches and abbeys close to existing yews, or who
having raised such buildings, then planted yew-
trees close alongside. For what more sublime pic-
ture of the endurance of God's kingdom could be
selected, or what emblem more exact of the immor-
tality of man ? To this day stand one or two of the
old yews near which the founders of Fountains
Abbey sat themselves down in rural council. Ages
have passed away since the sound of vespers fell
from those beautiful aisles upon the ear of the way-

124 THE YEW.

farer who lingered to gather cowslips in the meads
around, or to note the tender blue of the innumer-
able forget-me-not, or to mark the flow of the tran-
quil river and its darting fishes ; — everything is
gone except the sweet and solemn requiem pro-
nounced by ruin, — everything except those grand
old trees, which seem capable of witnessing the
rise and fall of just such another fabric, were some
architect to tempt them with renewal of the old
magnificence.

It may be useful and practically good to deem
the yew an emblem of death. We are taught here,
as in a thousand other places, that it is better to
deem it an emblem of the Changeless, that is to say,
of Life. Nothing is lost and everything is gained
by letting nature speak to us, whenever she will,
of immortality. The lesson of death and decay is
too plainly and too constantly recited to make it
needful that we should go out of our way for illus-
trations ; much more should we refrain from con-
verting symbols that are inherently suggestive of
good into emblems of what is only too familiar in
its reality.

Botanically considered, the yew holds a place in
nature shared by only a small company. Plain and
palpable as are the great classes and families into
which plants are resolvable by men of science, every
one of them a solar system, as it were, in miniature,
certain grand ideas of structure constituting centres

THE YEW. 125

round which minor ones are disposed planet-wise, —
plain and palpable as are these great classes in
regard to their centres and the mass of their ele-
ments, there are located upon the frontiers of all,
without exception, certain curious forms which give
a hand, so to speak, to either side. Just as whales
link mammals to fishes, — living in the ocean, like
sharks and dolphins, yet suckling their offspring
after the manner of female quadrupeds j just as
bats connect mammals again with birds ; and just
as those comical little creatures, the armadillos,
connect, still once more, the mammalia with the
reptilian races ; — so among plants do certain
strange organisms stand midway between the es-
pecially great and obvious classes, and constitute
the bridges whereby all things are maintained as a
unity. The Conifers, to which the members of the
yew-tree family stand as a kind of appendix, have
for one of their own ennobling functions this very
duty of associating forms otherwise unconnected.
The stems, the branches, the style of growth, the
longevity, the beautiful timber of the yew, link it
at once, and indisputably, to the foresters over
which the cedar presides, and which are to oak
and beeches just what opulent islands are to the
adjacent continents. The flowers, on the other
hand, point a different way, and when we take that
curious Japanese member of the yew-tree group
called the Salisburia, the leaves are, on a great

126 THE YEW.

scale, the leaflets of the maiden-hair fern ! No one
examining the leaves of this remarkable tree, the
Salwburict, could suppose otherwise than that they
belonged to a fern; no one "looking at the substan-
tial woody boughs, could have a moment's doubt
that the tree conformed, so far, with the oak and
walnut. The flowers of the yew itself are incon-
spicuous in the extreme. They come out early in
spring, usually about March, and are so much hid-
den by the foliage as to be overlooked except by
the curious interrogator. They are difficult, more-
over, of dissection, and the two sexes, male and
female, are produced upon different trees. Hence
it is only upon certain individuals, or those which
develop female flowers, that the characteristic red
berries are to be discovered. In structure these
pretty fruits are not very unlike the acorn of the
oak, only that instead of a hard and woody cup, the
receptacle is succulent and scarlet. That famous
fruit of Australia which is described by lovers of
the marvellous and by the ignorant as " a cherry
with its stone upon the outside," is very nearly the
same thing as the yew-tree berry, only produced by
a different tree, and with the seed more protruded
from the cup. Botanists call it Exoccvrpus.

The- slow growth of the yew, being a part of its
life-history, belongs, like the flowers, to the botani-
cal idea of the plant. To this slowness of growth
are chiefly owing the hardness and the smoothness

THE YEW. 127

of the wood, which for delicacy and beauty of
colouring is also excelled by few, the box alone
perhaps, presenting a surface of greater evenness
and polish. Yew is the most esteemed of all our
native woods for high-class turnery-work and for
inlaying. It has the recommendation also of being
rarely or never attacked by insects, guarded, like
that of the lime and the Indian sandal-wood, by
some native objectionableness. Sections, both
horizontal and vertical, constitute truly beautiful
objects for the parlour museum, and form an excel-
lent nucleus for a collection of such things. "W hen so
much time is devoted to " scrap-book " making and
to stamp-collecting, useful up to a certain point as
such pastimes may be, it seems a pity that as much
leisure and activity should not be given to collec-
tions of wood-sections, which endure for ever, are
beautiful and varied as seashells, and cost little
more than the trouble of polishing. In bygone
times the wood of the yew-tree was famous among
archers, and it is curious to note that no less than
three kings' of this country have lost their lives
through its instrumentality. First, the ill-fated
Harold, at the battle of Hastings ; then "William
Kufus, in the New Forest ; thirdly, Richard Cceur
de Lion, at Limoges. The battles of Crecy, Poic-
tiers, and Agincourt, were won through the energy
of the yew-tree bowmen, and perhaps the milder
archery of the present day would be more success-

128 THE YEW.

ful were the competitors to fall back upon the
ancient material of their renowned instrument.
The rings indicating age are in general very plainly
seen in the yew, and form a striking illustration of
the marvellous antiquity the tree is witness to. We
often hear of " railway time " and of " sidereal
time ; " the yew-tree helps to enforce upon us the
grandeur of the idea of "tree-time/' The vast age
attained by individuals is accompanied, as would be
looked for, by 'commensurate bulk and girth. In
the graveyard attached to Bucklaw church, about a
mile from Dover, there is, or was until recently,
a yew with a trunk of no less than 24 feet in circum-
ference. In Tisbury churchyard, Dorsetshire, there
is another, now quite hollow, with an entrance gate
on one side, and measuring 37 feet in circum-
ference ; while in the churchyard of Fortingal,
Perthshire, stand the remains of one which before
the trunk fell in, and it became reduced to its pre-
sent condition of little more than a shell, measured
round about the incredible number of 56 feet.
One of the most picturesque of our ancient yews
ornaments the churchyard of Darley Dale, Derby-
shire.

No mention of the yew is made in Scripture,
though there is reason to believe that it anciently
grew upon the mountains of Lebanon, if not there
still, since the tree extends far into Central Asia.
The Hebrew word<-eres, translated " cedar" in the

THE YEW. ]29

authorized version, would seem to have been used,
like many other botanical terms occurring in Holy
Writ, in a wide and general sense, including not only
the genuine cedar, Cedrus Libani, but other species
of conifers suitable for building purposes, and like-
wise the yew. Among the relics discovered at
Nineveh it is said that there are fragments of yew-
tree wood, declared to be such by the structure of
the fibre, as seen under the microscope. Virgil
used the name pinus, in one place at least, to
signify timber-trees in general ; and the well-known
frugality of the ancients in regard to the names of
flowers and fruits would seem to give additional
weight to the opinion. Scarcely a dozen flowers
are mentioned by the ancient poets, including those
of the Holy Land. The rose, the lily, the violet,
are spoken of; but in all these, and in all the rest,
the same kind of collective idea seems intended
When we read of the yew in the classical poets, it
is in the same spirit of dread and disrelish that
belongs to modern ones. Ovid, for example, selects
this tree to mark the place of descent into Tartarus
— " Dismal yew shades the deep declining way that,
through labyrinths of shade and horror, leads to
Tartarus ; languid Styx exhaling continual clouds."

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE.

JUST as men have their periods of worldly success,
or of public honour, or of fame in art or in literature,
at various ages (showing that there is no necessary
connection between the number of birthdays and
the hour of triumph) , so is it with the special glory
or beauty of trees, considered in relation to their
annual history : some, that is to say, are most
charming at the time of their earliest leaf, the beech
to wit; others look best when the foliage is mature ;
others when they are in blossom ; others, again,

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 131

when the fruit is ripe. The maple and the sycamore
belong to a section which appeals to us most power-
fully when the flowering is over, and the seed-
vessels, fully formed, but still only incipient, begin
to display themselves among the green. For though
pretty in their way, and conspicuous from their
abundance, at all events in the sycamore, the flowers
of these two trees make a very trifling show ; while
in the figui^e of the leaves, in the ripened fruit, and
even in the autumnal tinting of the former, there is
nothing by which they would at once be singled out
from the mass. Look at them, however, about the
time that the laburnums have ceased their rain of
gold, when the ferns are fast unrolling, and "the
first rose of summer, sweet blooming alone," steps
forth in the hedgerow like a planet in the evening
sky, and whatever they were before, now they seem
decked in every part with lively bloom. The colour
and the gaiety are given by the clusters of rudiment-
ary fruit, which in the maple is brownish-red, and
in the sycamore pinky-yellow. Sometimes the dis-
play is delayed a little; but the fact remains the
same that these two trees make more show during
the period of gestation than during any other portion
of their active life. By the peculiar form of the
fruit, they are at once distinguished also from every
other kind of tree which grows, either wild or as a
colonist, in Great Britian. Instead of some sort of
nut or acorn, like that of the oak ; instead of a cone,

K 2

132 THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE.

or a catkin, or a berry, or anything of the apple
form, these two produce a curious fruit, technically
termed a double samara. Originally, so far as can
be gathered from the use of the word by Columella,
this term was applied to the fruit of the elm-tree.
The application is now extended ; all fruits of struc-
ture similar to that of the elm (the little seed-like
fruits, for example, contained in the quasi-cone of
the birch-tree) being classed as samaras. The main
distinction in the maple and sycamore is the growing
of the samaras in couples, instead of singly.

The samara is a one-celled and one- seeded, dry,
and indehiscent fruit, provided with a long or broad
membranous wing, which enables the wind to waft
it far away. Hence the frequency with which trees
producing fruits of this nature are found perched
aloft upon old church towers and castle walls, where
they compete for the monarchy with trees that have
had their seeds conveyed thither by birds. While
young, these wing-like parts are semi-translucent ;
and on being held between the eye and the light,
show a network of veins. In old age, when begin-
ning to dry up, they become elegantly reticulated,
and in the depth of winter it is not uncommon to
find them reduced to the condition of skeletons.
Capital toys are they, too, for children. A properly-
ripened samara of the common sycamore (easily
known to be so by the roundness and solidity of the
seed at the end), thrown up into the air, spins and

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMOEE. 133

gyrates during its descent to the ground with a
rapidity that baffles the attempt to follow. It seems

DOUBLE SAMARA OS SYCAMORE.

like some queer insect in circular and downward
flight ; and when many are thrown up at once, the
busy wheeling becomes quite an entertainment. The
seeds of the conifers, when provided with the usual
wing, similarly circle downwards. A familiar natural
law is, of course, the explanation of this curious
spinning. At present we care to notice it only as
an illustration of the pretty charities with which
nature abounds, the child having its simple play-
thing provided, just as the philosopher has noble
ideas suggested, and the pious man happy reflections.
Few would suppose, until they come to be reckoned
up, how many of these little playthings our boys
and girls manage to find. The round, white head
of the dandelion, from which we blew the little ships
into the aerial sea, reckoning time, as they sailed
away, which the dial was never asked, — this is but
one of a thousand toys that at the same moment are
miracles of beauty, inside as well as outside. Well
may we say "inside" in respect of the sycamore

134 THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE.

seeds, for these, if carefully cut open when quite or
nearly ripe, present one of the prettiest spectacles in
the world. Lined with the softest and whitest silk,
in the centre lies, doubled up, the rudiment of the
future tree ; not a simple mass of albuminous kernel,
as in the nut, but a couple of perfectly -formed green
leaves, resembling little strips of green ribbon, so
folded and involved that to separate them without
fracture, is a matter of difficulty. The hinge-like
point of union is the actual embryo ; these two green
thongs are the cotyledons or " seed-leaves," which
parts, in the seed of a plant, occupy the place and
fulfil the purpose of the mother's bosom with regard
to her infant. As soon as the embryo awakes to
active life, these pretty cotyledons, charged with
tender food, become the main source of its nourish-
ment, and upon these it depends until the growth of
the root and ascending plumule enables it to forage
in the earth and atmosphere.

The celebrated Genevese naturalist, Charles Bon-
net, was the first to point out this beautiful and
expressive analogy ; to-day it is recognised univer-
sally that the cotyledons of the seed are the vegetable
mammae. So close and striking at every point is
the agreement of the idea of the plant with that of
human nature ! The question, in truth, is not so
much what may be the likeness between man and
the trees, but what is the difference between them !
How hard even to speak of a tree except in terms

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 135

first framed to denote the members of our own
bodies! The main pillar is the " trunk '," the
branches are the " arms ; " in the foliage we have,
poetically, the " tresses ; " the sap-vessels are the
" veins ; " and in the end, when a name is wanted
for the organs of the kindliest office of all, because
in charity so sweet, see how soon and accurately by
transference from woman ! Unable, from the nature
of its organization, to feed its offspring immediately
from its own body, as animals do, the plant bestows
on every one of its progeny a couple of these pretty
prefigurements of the mother's bosom ; and however
far the wind may carry them away, whatever geo-
graphical accident may befal them, nevertheless,
within the shell, as soon as the latent life begins
to stir, here are these delicate cotyledons able and
ready to give suck. "When, as happens in certain
races of plants, the cotyledons are exceedingly
minute, the deficiency is compensated by an abun-
dant storage within the shell of the seed, of the self-
same kind of nutriment. The likeness of the foliage
of a tree, especially when pendulous and waving, to
hair, and particularly to ringlets, is the ground of
many a beautiful phrase in the classic poets ; — Ovid,
for instance, in his " arboreas mulceat aura comas."
Similar lines occur in many places in high-class
English poetry, and will occur on the instant to
every accomplished mind. These sycamore seeds
vegetate with remarkable facility; and from some

136

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE.

circumstance not yet determined, a larger proportion
than of any other tree grow up into the first stage
of life that follows lactation. In the spring; for
one of any other self-sown seedling tree, there may
generally be observed a score of sycamores, illustrat-
ing in the most beautiful manner, as growth pro-
ceeds, the gradual development of the handsome
leaf so characteristic of the species.

LEAF OF SYCA3IORE.

By this last-named organ, the leaf, the sycamore
and the maple may alike be distinguished from
almost every other British tree. While the pre-
vailing form is ovate, and the ash and some others
are pinnate, here, in the maple and sycamore, we
have the shape termed " fan-lobed/' familiar in the

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 137

leaf of the grape-vine. The leaf, that is to say, has
about five great promontory-like projections, up to
the point of every one of which runs an indepen-
dent vein. The sycamore has the lobes acute ; in
the maple they are obtuse. In both trees, more-
over, the leaves grow in pairs, whereby the syca-
more is at once distinguished from that majestic
exotic, the plane, in which they are disposed singly
and alternately. There is no sort of relationship
between the sycamore and the plane. Hence it is so
much the more regretful that a tree of such ancient
fame, consecrated alike by tradition, poetry, and
philosophy, — for they were planes which constituted
the sacred groves and colonnades of the Academia, —
should have had confounded with it one of preten-
sions so inferior. Not that the sycamore is an un-
worthy tree. The dimensions it attains are often
truly grand, and standing alone upon the sward of
a park, where its imposing outline can be well
realized, it has qualities, in regard to the pic-
turesque, excelled by none. We must never judge
of trees from the deformed and stunted examples
that occur in hedgerows and in suburban gardens, or
even from those which occur in plantations, nor al-
ways even from foresters. Trees, to develop their
princely or queenly nature, as the case may be, require
space, the free circling around and through them of
nourishing winds, plenty of sunlight, to be unsoiled,
and to be refreshed by gentle rain. Good timber

138 THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE.

may be yielded, likely enough, by trees unhappily
placed as regards free growth ; but the dignity of
their figure, the repose of the outline, the sumptuous
massing of the foliage of the masc aline kinds, the
graceful trail of those of feminine habit, these, and
all other such qualities, are possible only to a life of
freedom. Precisely the difference between a ship

ENGLISH MAPLE, LEAF AND FRUIT.

laid up in a dock-yard, and, glorious in her white
sails, afar off upon the sea, " walking the waters
like a thing of life," is that of a tree as ordi-
narily seen, and the same species when robed in its
grand privileges, and fulfilling the destiny assigned
to it in the beginning.

The maple, Acer campestre, ordinarily seen onlv
as a bushy mass in the hedgerow, attains, under

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 139

congenial circumstances, the height of at least thirty
feet ; the sycamore grows to be seventy or eighty
feet high, and examples are known with trunks of
five or six feet in diameter. The age the latter is
capable of attaining appears to be fully 200 years.
While contrasting it with the exotic plane, it is
right to say here that, although perfectly at home
in this country, and often possessing all the
semblance of an ancient Briton, the sycamore also is
an exotic, having been introduced in the time of the
later crusades, from some part of central or eastern
Europe or western Asia, in which regions alone it is
truly indigenous. The maple, on the other hand, is
one of our veritable aborigines. Let it be added, as
regards the samaras, that the two trees are distin-
guishable by a certain difference between these parts
quite as readily as by the outline of their leaves.
The samaras of the sycamore are so placed as to
make a letter U, and resemble a pair of sword-
blades, while in the maple they spread horizon-
tally. Those of the former hang in racemes j those
of the latter in little bunches of three or four.

Connected with the leaves of these two trees, there
are one or two other circumstances deserving notice.
In both, they are remarkably red when first de-
veloped, giving a faint idea of what Sir Emer-
son Tennent states to be the customary con-
dition of things in the island of Ceylon. In that
beautiful tropic island, he says, it is not autumn

140 THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE.

which is marked, as in England, by the assump-
tion of rich colours by the trees, but Spring;
that which in our northern latitudes accompanies
decline and decay, being there associated with the
energy of youth and growth. We may readily un-
derstand this from contemplating, not alone the
lively tints of the trees in question, but the brilliant
tints of the young leaves of many Indian plants
cultivated in our conservatories : the Dracasnas, for
example, which begin life in the most vivid and
luxurious crimson. Another interesting fact is the
peculiarly rapid expansion of the leaves, at all
events in the sycamore. This comes of their being
folded up, while in the bud, after the manner of
a lady's fan when closed; and similarly, therefore,
to those of the " lady's mantle," — that pretty little
occupant of our meadows and pastures, which holds
dew in the plaits and angles. A few hours will
often suffice to cover a sycamore-tree with an ap-
parently miraculous outburst of foliage ; — buds in
the early morning, — in the evening a green ves-
ture in every portion. The horse-chestnut, which
has the leaves plaited while young, in a manner very
similar, is the only tree of common occurrence
which so soon changes winter into spring. There
is also the curious ornamenting of the leaves
of the maple with little red pimples, which gives
them often a very pretty appearance. Turn the
leaf upside down, and you will discover that every

THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 141

one of these pimples is in reality a little cell, the
habitation of some creature still more minute, and
having the entrance barricaded with tufts of white
hairs/ very interesting to examine with the micro-
scope. We admire the architectural grandeurs of a
great city. How many millions of quiet little
abodes are here, exquisitely beautiful in design and
finish, which we never even see, or seeing, pass by
with indifference and incuriousness ! The sycamore,
in its turn, is extremely liable, towards autumn,
to have its leaves patched with great round spots
of black. These have their origin in a parasitic
plant of fungoid nature, named by the learned,
Rhytistna acerina.

The October tinting varies considerably. While
the sycamore presents no colour of interest, the
maple turns to a deep, clear yellow, the more re-
markable since in the sugar-maple of Canada and
New Brunswick, the colour assumed before decay
is an inexpressibly-brilliant red. The last-named
tree is celebrated also for its copious supply of that
saccharine sap which, when subjected to certain pro-
cesses, becomes "maple-sugar." A similarly- con-
stituted sap exists more or less abundantly in all the
species of Acer, but it is ordinarily too thin and
watery to be used like that of the true sugar-
maple. Another excellent product of these trees is
the wood. Many species have been esteemed for
this from time immemorial. The Romans were par-

142 THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE.

ticularly fond of it, and in Virgil we have Evander
represented sitting on a maple throne. A corky

SUGAK MAPLE.

bark forms another feature of the common
English maple ; and as if this were not sufficient to
give botanical mark to the tree, the flowers are of
the curious nature called " polygamous ; " some, that
is to say, are bisexual, others are only male, others
are only female. The pistil, when present, is very
elegantly formed, having the figure of a column,
with two volutes at the summit, disposed after the
manner of those in the Ionic style of architecture.

It may be useful to add that the sycamore-tree,
above described, and which by botanists is named
Acer Pseudo-platanus, is totally different from the
sycomore of Scripture. How the name came to be
extended to a tree so unlike is not known, or at
least no explanation of it occurs in books. The

THE MAPLE AND TBE SYCAMORE.

sycomore of Scripture was a species of fig, Ficus
sycomorus. It grew abundantly in the valleys of
Palestine; also in Egypt, and hence obtained the
name of Pharaoh's fig. To this day it is cultivated
about Cairo and elsewhere for the sake of its shade ;
but it is a tree of little value either for timber or
fruit. In ancient Egypt, where there were few
native timber-trees, inferior as it is to many others,
a certain importance necessarily attached to it, and
the wood was used, it is said, in the manufacture of
mummy-cases. The fruit is insipid, but sweetish,
and is still used for food, but" only by the poorer
classes of the people. The sycamine-tree is different
again. By this name is intended the common black
or purple mulberry, which, as well as the white
mulberry, on the leaves of which silkworms are fed,
is said now to abound in Palestine, though it is
doubtful if the trees were common there in the days
of the prophets.

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER.

IT is curious that two trees of physiognomy so
entirely different as the birch and the alder should
nevertheless correspond closely in the minutiae of
botanical structure. Not that the instance is a
solitary one, or without many parallels. What more
unlike, for example, than the Pyrola and the heather
— the former a little herbaceous plant, the lily- of -
the-valley of the seaside sand-hills; the heather a
tough and wiry undershrub of wastes and mountain
solitudes. At the close of an autumn evening, the
Pyrola (which often mingles with the grass-of-
Parnassus) exhales an odour so powerful that by this
alone may be found the beautiful white forests

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 145'

•which come of its plenty, even did they not gleam
in the distance like drifts of summer snow; and in
this particular we get the first suggestion of a
possible affinity with the heather tribe, one of which,
called Clethra arborea,, seems surely to have been
scented from the same fountain. Examined in the
light, the individual blossoms show likeness again to
those of the Clethra; the Clethra in turn discloses
points of affinity with the heather; and at last we
find that all these plants are but varied utterances of
a single idea. The same may be said of the Parnassia
and the golden-saxifrage ; of clover and the sweet-
pea : of the cinquefoil, the strawberry, and the rose.
Where externals seem to betoken total unlikeness,
if not absolute isolation, presently, on asking of the
innermost heart, there dawns upon us the sense of a
most exquisite consanguinity. It is the old, old,
deathless fable of Proteus over again — the "trans-
formation" scene which no pantomime can ever
compete with.

While curious, accordingly, that the birch and
alder should be so unlike in their intimate likeness,
it is curious only in the same sense that a thousand
different melodies are all delightful. The variety
and the novelty are not the only charm ; that which
enchants is the native and inalienable sweetness and
feeling, and which holds us as deeply when long
familiar as in the beginning. It is a grand secret
in the art of estimating things aright, that the best is

L

146 THE BIltCH AND THE ALDEK.

not that which fascinates on the first view, but that
which waxes lovelier the longer it abides with us, or
we with it. The " curious " things in nature are
not, as some weakly imagine, the casualties, the
anomalies, or the extremes ; but those dear old ways
which God has daily manifested ever since the
morning-stars sang together, and which coustitute a
large portion of the alphabet through which, by
reverent watching, we may gather insights into the
Divine order and munificence. To the earnest
seeker after truth, a cowslip is more precious than a
twin-apple or a triple hazel-nut, strange vagaries as
they are; the "common things " of the world will
for ever keep the firmest hold upon human interest
and human affections, just as domestic love, new
and fragrant every morning, is better, and better
esteemed, than the largess of a prince.

The character by which the birch and alder are
brought together is found in the fruit. While they
correspond with the rest of the amentiferous class
of forest-trees in producing their male flowers in
catkins, they differ from all (except the feathery-
seeded willows and poplars) and agree between
themselves, in having the female flowers developed
in catkins likewise. Generically, the alders are dis-
tinguished by their hard and woody fruit-catkins,
the scales of which are persistent; while in the
birches the scales fall asunder, crumbling, when
ripe, beneath the pressure of the fingers, and liberal-

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 147

ing myriads of little flat and seed-like fruits, every-
one of which is provided with lateral wings. The
fruits of the alders, on the other hand, are wingless.
Besides this, in the alders many female catkins
stand side by side, or at all events near together,
the peduncle being branched ; while in the birches
the female catkins are always solitary. Altogether,
there are of these interesting trees some sixty or
seventy species. They grow in the woods and upon
the mountains of Europe, northern Asia, and the
Himalayahs, extending to Peru and Columbia, and
even into the antarctic regions, where, however, as in
the extreme north, they become reduced to the
condition of diminutive shrubs. Three species are
indigenous to Great Britain — the common or silver
birch, the dwarf birch, and the common alder. The
first and last, like most of the race, are esteemed for
their pictorial effect in landscape ; the dwarf birch
is interesting on account of its littleness, the leaves
being no larger than silver pennies. * Alders prefer
wet soil, whence they are frequent adjuncts of the
stream and river- side ; birches prefer ground that is
dry, and hence become a great embellishment of
declivities and hill-sides, as well known to all who
have stood face to face with the grandeur of the

* Under special circumstances, the dwarf birch will reach
the height of twenty feet, but it never becomes a tree in
substance.

L 2

148 THE BIECH AND THE ALDER.

highlands. Here, too, like the Osmunda, they often
creep down to the edge of the loch.

The silver birch, Betula alba, is known even to
the most incurious observer, being distinguished
from every other tree by the shining whiteness of
the bark ; it is remarkable also for the extreme
tenuity of its twigs, which in the variety called pen-
dula, droop so elegantly, and give an air of such
charming grace and modesty to the tree, combined
with the expression of a tender and high-souled
melancholy, that it has been well named the " lady
of the woods." Certainly no tree familiar to the
eye in northern temperate latitudes presents a
spectacle more consummately soft and delicate. The
mimosas and jacarandas of the tropics may rival it
perhaps in lace-like transparency; and there are
many glorious trees of silvered foliage, such as the
oleaster, which stand on a par with it as regards
gloss, when illuminated by the sunshine. But take
it all in all, even in the presence of these illustrious
rivals from the tropics, to the birch, wherever it
stands, will probably be awarded the foremost place
in admiration. The marvellous beauty of the tree
is, after all, seen better in winter than in summer.
Not until the branches have denuded themselves
and the various denizens of the woodlands stand
like the goddesses before Paris on Mount Ida, are
the matchless symmetry and proportions, the white-
ness and the queenly figure, brought out in their

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 149

incomparable perfection. So viewing them, we
cannot but feel how great an auxiliary in the pro-
motion of human delight is this self-same winter,
which, by thus constraining the woods to disrobe
themselves, shows lines and attitudes of beauty
which in summer are totally lost in the maze of
foliage. Clothing, that makes so beautiful, how
often is it the veil of a beauty still more transcend-
ing !

Induitur, formosa est : exuitur, ipsa forma !

In the depth of winter, wherever birches have
been liberally mingled with other trees in hill-side
plantations, the effect from the valley below is often
unique. Far aloft, they lift up their white and
shining fabric, not so much like the bleached skele-
tons some have compared them to, as, after the
manner of the constellations, speaking not of death
but of life; not of darkness and desolation, but
of that welcome lull in the too-vivid brightness
which by day prevents the beholding, and gives
to night a greater glory than belongs even to bright
noon. Very beautiful, too, is the spectacle of the
birches when, by reason of advancing autumn, they
begin to reveal themselves in the recesses of the
glen. Let us look for them. The sun shines
bright and kindly, and glows in rich red-brown on
the bare pillars of the far-away Scotch firs. On
every hand linger pretty relics of the summer, waifs
of ivory meadow-sweet, overworn grasses, reluctant

150 THE BIKCH AND THE ALDER.

to wither, and foxglove bells in twos and threes
where once were tall spires of nodding purple ; the
scabious and the golden-rod are holding festival ;
the ferns have unrolled their last leaflets of braid
and spangle; the heather is fast uncovering its
bosom to the bees ; ah, see ! there are berries, too,
upon the vitis idcea, and beautiful round galls, like
unripe cherries, upon the oak-leaves ; and here, too,
is the nipplewort, covered over with little green
seed-baskets, and that goes on blossoming so cheer-
fully till Christmas. A fair and pleasant plant is
this ; the blossoms open only to the sunshine, yet it
can sustain the rain and cold, and though the frost
may blanch it, the form remains to the last. Now
we wind along the shady pathway by the river, and
list its sweet babble, that never ceases, winter or
summer, marking too, as we go, the great stones
that tell of the vehemence of the flood that so wasted
the banks. Are the birches down here ? I think
not ; we are too near the water's edge. Try among
those beautiful green crowds upon the upper ridges,
that seem asleep in the amber sunlight, with above
them that glorious inheritance men call the sky, to-
day blue as turquoise or forget-me-not, and islanded
with molten silver. Surely we shall have them now !
Ah, yes. Here spread those beautiful white arms ;
here sweep the leafy tresses ; let the stream rejoice
in its alders ; the birch is for the uplands, where it
shall receive the first caresses of the morning, and

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 151

be a brightness again when the stars twinkle, and
Endymion is bathed in the light of his love.

The preference of the birch for a dry and airy
situation, combined with the matchless delicacy of
its figure, and its perfect penetrability by the light,
well adapt it also for the central ornament of a lawn
or large grass plot ; and beautiful is it, in the calm
of a summer's evening, to watch the bright round
moon shine through it undimmed. In old trees the
bark is apt to be very much broken up, and there
come great patches of corrugated blackness, which
serve, however, by the contrast, to make the silver
that remains still more conspicuous. In other cases
these tarnished parts become green with the in-
cipient growth of mosses. When covered up from
the corroding influences of the atmosphere, the
sheen of the bark seems indestructible, as shown
when lumps of ancient birch-tree wood are dug out
of peat-bogs. In Cheshire, it happens frequently
that when the peat-diggers penetrate to near the
bottom, they come upon boughs and branches,
with twigs innumerable, the interior or ligneous
portion brown and decayed, but the vesture as white
and perfect as when the tree was alive and thriving.
The occurrence of these remains shows the birch to
be one of our genuine aborigines. Where now the
peat-bog lies in black and wet sterility (except for
that brief period in high summer when it is
enlivened by the silver tassels of the cotton-grass,

152 THE BIRCH AND THE ALDEK.

or the golden spikes of the asphodel), once upon a
time, and not so very remotely, probably not much
more than 1500 or 2000 years ago, there was either
marsh-land or forest, the floor of the latter being
what is now the solid ground underneath the bog.
The accumulation of water, and the gradual decay
of the plants, laid the foundation of the bog ; such
trees as grew there would soon fall, and, with the
gradual development of the bog-vegetation above,
their remains would become buried where we now
find them. There is another curious feature in the
bark of the birch which deserves notice, namely,
its aptitude to split into extremely thin laminae or
sheets. The highest development of this property
is seen in one of the North American species,
thence called Betula papyracea, or the " paper-
birch." The layers of bark are so broad, so smooth,
and so tough withal, that they form an admirable
natural paper, and will allow of being written upon
almost as easily as manufactured material, the only
drawback being that the colour is light brown. The
thicker portions of the bark of this singular tree
are wrought by the native Indians of New Bruns-
wick into toys, models of canoes, etc., as well as
boxes, the former often ornamented with the quills
of the American porcupine, and with the dyed hair
of the moose-deer. One of the Himalayan species
of birch, which men of science have agreed to call
by its native name, Betula Bhojpatra, yields a

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 153

similarly-laminated bark. The Sanscrit name of
this bark, which is used for corresponding purposes,
is bhoorja, and hence, in all likelihood, comes our
word " birch." Such an etymology is strictly in
accordance with that of " poplar," named above,
and with several others, and indicates in a pleasing
manner the migration from Central Asia westwards
of the progenitors of the races of modern Europe.
One other circumstance in the physiognomy of the
birch is found very frequently to attract attention.
It happens in this tree that there is often an ar-
rested or impaired development of some portion of
the buds. The consequence is that dense bushes
of short twigs are produced, concealed when the
leaves are open, but in winter very conspicuous, re-
sembling deserted crows' nests, and often occurring
to the number of twenty or thirty in a single tree.
In Scotland these odd developments are termed
" witches' knots."

The leaves of the birch are, as a rule, smaller than
those of any other British tree in which the outline
is of the same character. The " small-leaved elm "
is the only other in which the dimensions are so
limited. Yet upon very young trees, and more
especially upon those luxuriant and vigorous side-
shoots which start from the stumps of old trees that
have been cut down, they are often of incredible
size. The outline varies a good deal, changing from
ovate to almost triangular; but there is always a

154

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDEE.

sharp point, and the margins are always serrated.
The catkins make their appearance very early in the

BIRCH
(ordinary form).

BIRCH

(young shoot).

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 155

season, the males starting from the extremities of
the twigs, and growing in pairs, so as to give the
idea of little V's, until fully expanded, which is
simultaneously with the opening of the leaves, when
they droop elegantly, and in vast profusion, a female
catkin ordinarily accompanying every male, but so
small as almost to elude observation. The males
are light brown, nearly two inches in length, and
pendulous; the females are green, variegated with
the crimson stigmas, and generally erect or nearly
so. The age attained by the birch, is of course not
so considerable as that of trees of greater girth and
robustness ; the maximum stature would seem to be
fifty or sixty feet. No mention of the tree is made
in Scripture, nor does it appear to have attracted
the notice of the classical poets, a fact explained
perhaps by its comparatively rare occurrence in
southern Europe, where moreover it is found only
in mountain fastnesses.

The Alder possesses none of the lady-like charms
of the birch; as an invaluable ornament of river-
scenery, it stands, however, quite on a level with the
willow. No tree is more easily told ; the broken, or
torn, or cut inside of the stem and branches, though
whitish when growing, very soon acquires a peculiar
reddish colour, while the leaves are differently
shaped from any other. Ordinarily the leaves of
trees possess a point, more or less attenuated, owing
to the onward push of the midrib. But in the alder

156 THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER.

the extremity of the leaf is absolutely pointless, and
there is frequently a little tendency to a sinus or
inward curve, resembling a bay on a coast-line.
This gives the leaf an exceedingly broad and almost
circular character. While young, the twigs and

THE ALDER.

leaves are excessively clammy, whence the appropri-
ate name Alnus glutinosa. The darkness of the
green is another feature by which they may be
recognised. That which is most noticeable in the
tree is perhaps the beautiful aspect it holds when in
flower. The catkins are very numerous, large, and
of a deep rich brownish-red colour ; — coming out
long before the leaf-buds expand, they are displayed,
like those of poplars, to the highest perfection, and
gently moving to the breeze, seem like legions of
caterpillars, a circumstance even more striking in

THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 157

some of the American kinds. Then in autumn we
have a condition more pleasing yet. At this season,
upon most individuals that have reached maturity,
may be seen standing side by side, the representatives
of three distinct and successive seasons of growth.
Many of the black and emptied seed-catkins of the
preceding year still cling to the twigs ; abundance
of the fat green seed-catkins of the current year, re-
sembling clusters of little fir-cones, are within reach;
and upon every branch there is promise of the sea-
son to come, that is to say, of the following spring,
in the shape of rudimentary stamen-catkins. Many
trees give notice thus long beforehand of the activity
contemplated for the year to follow ; but it is in the
alder alone that we have all these seasons, the past,
the present, and the future, so beautifully associated.
The phenomenon is one of so much the more interest
from its reminding us once again how far back lie
the beginnings of things ! In April, we say, Behold
the spring ! But the alder was on the alert in
March, in February, at Christmas ! yea, long back
in the old year, while the farewell-summer was in
blossom, and the nuts were barely ripe ! It forms a
beautiful picture of the incessant recurrence of life
upon death; before the aged have departed, the
young are rising up to take their place.

The uses of the alder are not confined to its land-
scape effects and its significance. The leaves afford
a brown dye, indicated by their rapidly changing to

158 THE BIKCH AND THE ALDER.

this colour when laid between papers to dry for the
herbarium ; and if we are to believe Virgil, it was
of alder wood that mankind constructed the first
ships ; at all events the first record of ship-build-
ing after the time of Noah's ark, is that well-known

line —

Tune alnos primum fluvii sensere cavatas.

The alder is mentioned also by Homer, under the
name of clethra (now applied to the fragrant flower-
ing-shrub mentioned above), but apparently not
elsewhere. The wood has the valuable property of
resisting the action of water, whence it is of great
commercial value for the construction of piles for
bridges, etc., as in the celebrated arch of the Eialto
at Venice, which is said to owe its stability to the
use of this alone. In France, great numbers of the
wooden shoes, there called " sabots," are also manu-
factured from the wood of the alder. In stature
this tree rises to the height of fifty or sixty feet ; in
profile, when well grown, it is broad-headed and
somewhat oak -like.

THE ASH-TREE.

THE fame of the Ash-tree reaches back to the re-
motest antiquity, the wood having been used from
time immemorial for spear-shafts and in the con-
struction of other weapons of war, whence its well-
known epithet — the " martial." Strange that such
a purpose should be served by a tree, the young
branches of which are so brittle that they snap like
sealing-wax. The delicate and feminine beauty of
the ash has also contributed to render it an object
of frequent mention in literature, as when Virgil
commends it as the most graceful of trees, in the
often-quoted line —

Fraxinus in sylvis pulclierrima.

160 THE ASH-TKEE.

To English landscape the ash gives something of
the character which in warm countries is supplied
by the Acacia. This comes of its feathered leaves.
The sunbeams filter perfectly through the foliage,
and thus we receive at all times that agreeable
sense of lightness and transparency which results
from the sky being seen through a net- work of twig
and verdure. In its stature, too, the ash commends
itself, well-grown individuals rising to the height of
from eighty to a hundred feet. It has been said,
that while we instinctively most love that which is
little, admiration fastens chiefly upon the great ; I
think it will prove that we find our highest pleasure,
after all, in contemplating that which strikes us
more particularly as lofty, of course with the idea
of symmetry combined. We give this meed of
approval, as the spontaneous act of the soul, to
the lily, to the aspiring palm, to the woman who
> rises higher than her companions. Not that in so
doing we depreciate and disesteem the less, but that
the tall takes the firmest and deepest hold. It is a
great point to be always invited, by the stature of
what surrounds us, to look upivards ; or at all events,
not to have our eyes habitually below the line of
straight seeing. Our physical nature and organiza-
tion are the better for such upward-looking ; and a
certain quiet satisfaction of spirit, felt, though inde-
finable, flows therefrom as a beautiful corollary. I
have often thought that it may have pleased God to

THE ASH-TREE. 161

furnish, and decorate the earth with tall trees in no
slight measure for this identical and especial pur-
pose. Timber, or something equivalent to it, might
have been caused to exist after the manner of granite
and marble : — fruits are produced, as it is, mainly
by plants of inconsiderable height, so designed, no
doubt, in order that their juicy largess shall be
reached readily and pleasantly ; all other gifts of
vegetation it is quite easy to conceive as producible
by herbaceous plants, and how copiously, let the
gums, the resins, the dyes, the medicines which the
latter yield so profusely, declare on their behalf.
All this luxury and munificence is quite conceivable ;
yet no such provision would compensate the want of
the green stateliness of the Trees. Shade, dignity,
the poetry of the past, the delight of the present,
the hope and inspiration of the future; all these
things come of their glorious tallness ; contemplat-
ing which, we are constrained to peer into the
heavens. The two most admirable things in living
nature, are mankind and the perennial trees; and
the most perfect expression of the beautiful lies in
that section of each respectively which we term the
feminine, the latter always gaining from graceful
stature. It is interesting to observe, at the same
moment, that the ash, while so stately in its upright
growth, is one of those trees in which the branches
most readily assume the pendant position, thus be-
coming what are inconsiderately called " weeping,"-*

162 THE ASH-TEEE.

the true idea being rather that of long tresses,
gracefully let down awhile, and calculated to remind
us, not of mourning and the disconsolate, but rather
of such incidents as when the Lady Godiva —

" Let fall the rippled ringlets to her knee."

Quite enough of calamity and sadness is inevitable
to this temporal world to render it unnecessary for
man to encourage thoughts and to impose names
that shall make it seem more plentiful. The true
idea of wisdom and of religion alike, is cheerfulness ;
and our pride and pleasure should be, not only to
cultivate unbroken gratitude to God for the multi-
tudinous small mercies which we daily enjoy, and to
cherish thankful sensations and ideas, but at the
same time to endeavour to reflect those thoughts
and feelings upon the face of nature, seeking and
striving to behold gladness in all things, and to
gather, in turn, from the pictures set forth in nature,
new incitements to the pursuit of what is "lovely
and of good report," new impulses to be energetic
in right doing, new reason to forsake selfishness as
being a thing utterly unprofitable. It is just these
results upon our hearts which constitute the true
utility and the magnificence of the purpose of
the world around us. If we ask what is the
use of an immense proportion of the world's con-
tents, meaning by "use," serviceableness for food,
or for drink, or for clothing, there will come

THE ASH-TKEE.

163

no answer. It was but a small part of the Divine
munificence to provide for the satisfaction of bodily
wants. It has pleased God to make innumerably
more things fitted to do good to oui souls than He
has prepared of a kind suited to the body, only we
think so little of it and so seldom. See how earnestly
we thank Him at meal-times, and rightly so, for our
meat, and peas, and beans, for our milk and sugar
and bread: do we not sometimes err in forgetting to

ASH LEAVES AND VERY YOUNG FRUIT.

thank Him for the Trees? I see, too, in these
beautiful pendulous ones, the weeping-ash for ex-
ample— so charming an ornament for a lawn, espe-
cially when not far from a silver birch — a sweet
emblem of filial love. For though fed and allured in
every possible way by the atmosphere and the sun-
shine overhead, see how the branches seem to love
the spot from which that glorious canopy of verdure

M 2

164

THE ASH-TREE.

took its rise ! Tall and illustrious as the tree is now,
once it was a little seedling that might be crushed
beneath the foot. So true is it that nature contains
counterparts of everything that is delightful in the
history of human life and the human affections — one
form or another gives us a picture of everything
that goes to make up home and love ; faithfulness,
and reverence, and solace.

Botanically, the ash-tree is distinguished from
every other arborescent plant of our country (save
and except the somewhat similar mountain-ash) by
the peculiar form of the leaves. These instead of
consisting of a single blade, like those of the oak,
the elm, or the beech, are composed of several pairs
of leaflets, with an odd one at the extremity. Tech-
nically, this form is called "pinnate," or feather-like.
Whether the leaflets be articulated to the main stalk
from the first, so as to constitute a truly compound
leaf is not quite clear. When they fall in autumn,
the pieces certainly come asunder, just like those of
the horse-chestnut and the Virginian-creeper; it is
not unusual, on the other hand, to find young leaves
in September, in which all the members are perfectly
conjoined. The analogy of the jessamine, to which
the ash-tree is nearly allied, would seem to indicate
that they are not truly compound. The foliage is
late in coming out, — with the exception of the mul-
berry, perhaps there is no tree in England which is
habitually so much behindhand; and late as the

THE ASH-TBEE. 165

leaves appear, they are among the soonest to fade
in the autumn. At the last-named period the ash
assumes none of those brilliant hues which go to
make up the grandeur of the woodland sunset. The

ASH WITH RIPE FRUIT.

leaves simply turn to a dull brownish-green, curling
up as if scorched, and generally fall from the tree
almost together, so that the branches become de-
nuded in the course of one or two days. There is a
useful bit of practical knowledge connected with this
tardy appearance and early decay. The expansion
of the leaves is a sign that the season is sufficiently
advanced for green-house plants to be trusted out of
doors, the chance of frost being now reduced to a
minimum ; and by-and-by, when the leaves begin to
fall, it is a sign that the time is come for the restora-

166 THE ASH-TREE.

tion of them to their wonted shelter. So pleasing
are the " signs of the times " afforded by plants ;
very many of which are almost as trustworthy as
those drawn from astronomy.

Linnaeus proposed to construct a calendar for the
guide of the gardener and of the agriculturist,
which would enable them, by observing at what
periods certain trees come into leaf, or certain
plants into blossom or fruit, to judge of the best
times for sowing and planting, and also for gather-
ing in the crops. It stands to reason that if after a
few years' careful observation, a particular vegetable
is found to succeed best when the seed is sown at
the time some particular flower is in perfection, the
recurrence of that period, the renewal of the perfec-
tion of that particular flower, will mark the time
when the vegetable in question will again be most
likely to be sown to advantage. In this beautiful
concord we should in time secure a certain guide to
healthy and prosperous operations, alike in field
and garden, and should be able to calculate exactly
when to look for the results. " If we found," for
instance, says one who laboured hard to establish
the fact, " that on sowing peas or other seed when
the gooseberry -bush blossomed, they were ready for
getting when the corn-marigold flowered, we might
be pretty sure that every succeeding year the same
uniformity would prevail, and by a little attention,
the suitable times for all other such operations

THE ASH-TREE. 167

would be determined." It is not only in reference
to garden and farm produce that such a calendar is
at once possible and very interesting. So exact is the
agreement between the period in the leafing and the
flowering of trees and plants, that meeting with one
kind in some fair and pleasant field, we are assured
that in the woodland we may now look with certainty
for some other, each being an intimation of the arrival
of its companion. That such a correspondence
exists between the arrival and departure of migra-
tory birds, and in their songs and nest-building ;
also in the hatching of certain insects, and the
appearance of certain flowers, has long been known
to naturalists, and many plants have been named
from this beautiful harmony, the cuckoo-flower for
instance, and probably the wake-robin. By-and-
by, when men learn to love nature as dearly as it
deserves, these engaging truths will all be marshalled,
and almanacks will deal not only with the changes
of the moon, and the sun's rising and setting, but
will become tables of the sweet harmonies that sub-
sist between nature's calm and pleasant teachings
and man's highest practical wisdom. It is im-
possible to enter nature at any point, but we come
at once upon something useful to know ; and the
.knowledge of which increases our happiness.

The particular place held by the ash in the sequence
of arrivals of first leaves was established by the cele-
brated Benjamin Stillingfleet, who in Norfolk, in

168 THE ASH-TEEE.

the year 1 765, made out the following list of dates.
Of course they will vary with the season, a late
spring driving all a little forwards, a forward one
giving each a little earlier place, but the relative
periods will probably be found to vary but slightly.
It is with the leafing of trees as with the rise and
sweet sheen of the constellations : their places
vary with the hour of the night, but they never alter
their positions with regard to one another and to
the pole-star. Omitting some of the less important
trees and shrubs, the following is the list referred
tor-
Honeysuckle January 15

Elder March 11

Birch April 1

Bramble „ 3

Plum, Apricot, and Peach, about ... „ 6

Filbert, Sallow, and Alder, about ... „ 7

Sycamore „ 9

Small-leaved Elm „ 10

Wych-elm „ 12

Mountain-ash and Hornbeam „ 13

Apple „ 14

White-poplar and Chestnut „ 16

Oak ' .^ 18

Lime „* 19

v Maple, Black-poplar, and Beech ... „ 21
Ash „ 22

Individual trees, of course, may be found antici-
pating the generality, just as in late autumn we may
often observe individuals still green long after the

THE ASH-TREE. 169

great mass of their kind has become denuded. The
principle, nevertheless, remains true, and all that is
needed is for various observers in different places to
note down the particulars for a few consecutive
years, and then compare them. The least variation
in the periods of events in nature available for the
purpose of a calendar appears to be in the arrival of
the migratory birds, and in the hatching of young
rooks ; the greatest, on the other hand, is in the
blossoming of the turnip, the appearance of the
yellow butterfly^ and the singing of the loved and
always welcome thrush.

The flowers of the ash-tree are the simplest known
to Botany, at least as regards trees. They make
their appearance long before the leaf-buds open, at
first resembling clusters of ripe blackberries, and
closely seated upon the twigs, towards the extremi-
ties. This rich and vinous colour is wholly given
by the anthers, which while young, are large and
oval, and very densely packed. By degrees the
mass becomes disintegrated, and the innumerable
little blossoms compose a loose and branching
panicle, not unlike that of the lilac-tree flowers.
Between every couple of anthers lies, usually, a thin
flat ovary, and this in due course, ripens into the
well-known winglike body called the "ash-key."
Some trees never produce fruit ; the ash being one
of those plants which, without being structurally
unisexual, after the manner of the Amentiferae, are

170 THE ASH-TKEE.

nevertheless, by non-development of some portion,
unisexual very often in effect. In other words, some
individuals produce perfect or bisexual flowers, while
others are deficient in the pistilline or female por-
tion. Hence it is that in winter, when the "keys "
hang upon many individuals in those dense brown
clusters which are so strikingly characteristic of this
beautiful tree when leafless, certain other indi-
viduals are totally without them. They are generally
at a considerable height, few being procurable by
the 'hand lifted from below ; and the same of course
is previously the condition of the flowers, which
like those of poplars, often make us envy the birds,
to whom no blossom is inaccessible. Many marks
thus serve to isolate and distinguish the ash-tree,
and if more were needed, we have them in the
peculiar curving upwards of the extremities of the
branches, at least when the tree is adult and grow-
ing old; in the flattened extremities of the twigs;
and in the sooty-black buds, which at all seasons
are more or less remarkable.

It is pleasing to. observe for what very different
situations the various figures of trees severally
adapt themselves. The ash shows nowhere better
than at the corner of a wood, where, by bringing off
the heaviness of other trees, it forms, by reason of
its lightness, a sort of transition from foliage to airy
space. Hence, too, the exquisite effect of ash-trees
when they have shot up, from wind-conveyed seeds,

THE MOUNTAIN-ASH. 171

among ruins, such as those of roofless abbeys. The
spectacle of a dismantled abbey is always full of
power for the soul. Art seems fast verging into
Nature ; the walls arabesqued with ivy ; every ledge
and " coigne of vantage " occupied by the sweet
azure of the harebell, grasses, or yellow hawkweeds;
the lines of massive pedestals that mark where
sprang the glorious pillars ; the broken lacework of
the spaces where once were windows; all these
things are touching and impressive ; — wonderful is
it how all seem made more eloquent, when, dis-
closed here and there, though crevice and aperture,
we get glimpses of the delicate foliage of the ash.
No tree harmonizes so well with dilapidation ; the
very hue seems a reflection of grey antiquity.

THE MOUNTAIN-ASH.

THE mountain-ash must not be associated with the
genuine ash. The name is a very unfortunate one,
referring simply to the likeness, slight as it really
is, between the leaves, and which consists in nothing
more than in both being pinnately compound. "The
mountain-ash is a near relative of the apple and
pear. Hence we find in its blossoms the rosaceous
type of corolla, while the fruit corresponds, in a cer-
tain measure, with that of the orchard, though in
dimensions little more than a berry. The charming
spectacle which the flowers present in May, places
this tree in the first rank of ornamental ones ; and

172 THE CHESTNUT.

although for two or three months afterwards it
makes no show, the delay is more than compensated
by September, when the rich vermilion clusters at-
tract the most incurious.

" The mountain-ash

No eye can overlook, when 'mid a grove
' Of yet unfaded trees she lifts her head,
Decked with autumnal berries, that outshine
Spring's richest blossoms."

These berries, popularly deemed poisonous, are
perfectly free from hurtful properties. In the west
and north of Scotland they are commonly converted
into jelly for the breakfast-table ; in Siberia likewise
they are put to some such use. When carefully pre-
pared, this jelly has a beautiful violet tinge.

THE CHESTNUT.

CONCERNING the chestnut, it is merely necessary to
speak of the differences which keep it distinct from
the^sculus, or horse-chestnut, neither of these noble
productions of nature being met with in Britain
except as ornaments of the park or pleasure-ground.
For although the chestnut was introduced as far
back as the time of the Eomans, and has now be-
come thoroughly at home (except as to the ripening
of its fruit) ; it has not, like the elm and sycamore,
taken its place in the wood and wilderness. Wher-
ever met with, it is always obviously from the hand
of the planter. As for the horse-chestnut, it appears

THE CHESTNUT.

173

to have been in England only some three centuries.
Of the true chestnut, Castanea vesca, many magni-
ficent examples occur in different parts, sufficiently

THE CHESTNUT.

venerable to give the perfect idea of " ancient Bri-
tons." They are still referable, however, to the origin
spoken of. The differences in question are readily
enumerated. In the "sweet" chestnut the leaves are

174 THE CHESTNUT.

simple and feather-veined ; in the horse-chestnut
they are septate. The flowers of the latter are pro-
duced in superb clusters, every corolla having its
whiteness richly broken with patches of gold and
crimson ; those of the sweet chestnut, on the other
hand, are destitute of the brightness we connect
with the idea of blossom. They are unisexual also ;
the males growing in slender spikes, the females in
prickly knobs.

The purpose we had in view at the beginning is
now completed; namely, the giving some account
of the forest and other large and commanding trees
ordinarily met with in Great Britain. There are
many more trees of a smaller description, and all
have abundance of interesting and curious history
and association, so that these chapters, were it de-
sirable at the present time, might be trebled. Who,
for instance, is unacquainted with the elder, the
blossoming of which is a sign that summer is
matured, and the fruit of which shows, in its black-
ness, that summer is over ? Then there are the
wild pear, the wild apple, the wild medlar, and the
wild cherry, — trees mostly loaded in spring with
snowy bloom. After these we find the guelder-rose,
the tamarisk, the box, and the spindle -tree ; the
Frangula, the buckthorn, and the dogwood. The

THE CHESTNUT.

175

SWEET (OR SPANISH) CHESTNUT.

176 THE CHESTNUT.

white-beam is remarkable for the snowy aspect of
its foliage when stirred by the wind ; the bag-nut
for its chandeliers of pinky white in May, followed
in autumn by round bags containing each a bril-
liantly-polished brown bead; the bird-cherry, Pno^'x
Padua, completely covers itself with racemes of
white flowers exhaling the odour of honey. Then
there are the innumerable smaller kinds of willow
and sallow ; the holly, covered in winter with those
glorious scarlet bracelets ; and the hawthorn, or
" May," so deservedly famed in verse. The sloe,
though rarely attaining the dimensions of a tree, has
likewise many claims upon our interest. So has the
berbery ; so has the sweet-gale ; so have those very
curious trees, the sea-buckthorn and the juni-
per ; so have the hazel, the hornbeam, the arbutus,
and the wayfaring-tree.

After those which stand independently, there are
whole tribes of roses and brambles, the sweet-brier,
the honeysuckle, and the clematis; and longer-living,
and farther-reaching, and greener than any, the in-
comparable old ivy of the ruin and the aged tree.
Another set, of still smaller dimensions, attracts us
in the wild currants, the privet, and the whortle-
berry ; here, too, we find the broom and prickly
furze, with their myriads of golden butterflies. In
truth, there is no absolute stopping-place. Trees
are the maximum ; between their majesty and the
minimum there is so beautiful a descending scale of

THE CHESTNUT. 177

size and stature, that unless an arbitrary line be
drawn, we cannot stop till we are abreast of the
merest herb. Technically, even the wild thyme, that
makes those lovely purple knolls on the grassy com-
mon, is a " shrub," for the branches, though only of
the thickness of a needle, are woody and permanent,
and the leaves endure throughout the winter.

INDEX.

Abele, 110, 114. Castanea vesca, 173.

Abbeys, Euins of, 171.

Cathedrals, 56, 79.

Acacia, 86.

Catkins, 104.

Acanthus, 96.

Cedar, 51, 128.

Acer, 138, 142.

Ceylon, 139.

Aconite nectaries, 100.

Chatsworth, 10, 91.

Alder-tree, 144.

Chestnut 172.

Alnus glutinosa, 156.

Clematis, 47.

Amber, 49.

Clethra, 145.

Amentiferas, 104.

Coleridge quoted, 62.

Anomodon curtipendulum, 28.

Common things, 146.

" Apple-of-Sodom," 21.

Cones, 41.

Archery, 127.

Conifers, 43.

Arethusa, Fable of, 112.

Cotyledons, 135.

Ash-tree, 159.

Cowper quoted, 97.

Aspen, 110, 115.

Creasote, 49.

Australian-cherry, 126.

Daffodil 100.

Autumnal foliage, 66.

Barley Dale/128.

Basket, a Celtic word, 118.

Dartmoor, 28.

Bass or Bast, 90.

Deserts, 92.

Beech-tree, 44, 55—69.

Development, Importance of

Bees, 99, 100.

watching, 93.

Begonia, 94.

Dido, Queen, 111.

Betula alba, 148.

Dio3cious trees, 105.

„ Bhojpatra, 152.

Dionsea, 106.

,, papyracea, 152.

Dracaenas, 140.

Bignonia echinata, 42.

Druids, 26.

Birch-tree, 144.

Dryads' cup, 30.

Birds, 18, 19.

Dryopteris, 31.

Bonnet, Charles, 134.
Borrowdale, 37.

Echoes in Nature, 66.

Botanical Geography, 38, 73.
Botany, True Idea of, 15.

Elder, 175.
Elm-tree, 70.

Bracken, 33.

Endogens, 8.
England the Exhibition of the

Calypso, Island of, 97.

world, 10.

Camellia, 72.
Canada-balsam, 49.

England the world'sFlower-show.
39.

179

Epimedinm, 94.

Loranthns Europseus, 27.

Epiphytes, 25.

Lotus-tree, 30.

Exocarpus, 126.

Exogens, 6.

Mandeville, Sir John, 82.

Maple, 130.

Feminine trees, 85, 86.

Maple- sugar, 141.

Ficus religiosa, 116.

Martial quoted, 118.

Filix-foemina, 85.

Masculine trees, 85, 86.

Filix-mas, 85.

Microscope, The, 39.

Fir-cones, 41.

Milton quoted, 100.

Fir-tree, 38, 41.

Mistletoe, 26, 101.

Fountains Abbey, 123.

Monoecious trees, 105.

Fries, 30.

Mosses, 28.

Fruit, Botanical use of the "Word,

Mountain-ash, 171.

4.

Mulberry-tree, 44, 110.

Furness Abbey, 171.

Narcissus, 100.

Galls, 21.

Naturalists' Calendar, 168.

Godiva, Lady, 162,

Nectaries, 100.

Goethe quoted, 122.

Nepenthes, 106.

Gopher-wood, 51.

Nineveh, 129.

Grass-of- Parnassus, 93, 99,

Nipplewort, 150.

Gum, 49.

Gymnostachvum Cumingianum,

Oak, 11.

72.

,, apples, 21.

„ fern, 31.

Hardcastle Crags, 26.

„ spangles, 23.

Homer quoted, 11.

(Enone, 57.

Honey, 97.

Oleaster, 148.

Honey-cups, 100.

Ophelia, 113.

Horse-chestnut, 175.

Osier, 118.

Human frame in plants, 65.

Oulton Park, 89.

Hydnum coralloides, 67.

Ovid quoted, 58, 129, 135,

Oxalis, 72.

Insect-life, 19.

Ivy, 24, 176.

Palm-trees, 10, 36.

Palm-willow, 119.

Kensington Gardens, 75.

Pan, 66.

Paper-birch, 152.

Lady's-mantle, 37, 140.

Parasitic plants, 25.

Lebanon, 50.

Peat-bogs, 151.

Lime-tree, The, 85.

Peziza coccinea, 30.

Limes, 89, 90.

Pine-tree, 35.

Linden, 90.

Pine-woods, 48.

Lofty things, 160.

Phaeton, 112.

Lombardy-poplar, 109.

Poetry, 48.

180

INDEX.

Poplar, 103.
Potentilla Anserina, 66.
Prunus Padus, 176.
Pteris Aquilian, 33.
Pyi-ola, 144.

Quercus pedunculata, 12.
„ sessniflora, 12.

Redland Court, 75.
Khytisma Acerina, 141.
Books, 75.
Rosalind, 57, 119.

Safeguards of Nature, 91, 92.
Salisburia, 125.
Salix, 114—119.
Samara, 132.
Schleiden quoted, 52.
Scotch-pine, 45.
Shakspere quoted, 113.
Shapes of leaves, 62.
Sycamore, 130.

Teil-tree, 90.
Theocritus quoted, 48.

Tilia, 88.

Trees, Age of, 33.

„ Antiquity of, 34, 52.

,, Associations of, 58, 113,

123.

,, Economic uses of, 3.
,, Grandeur of, 160.
„ Growth of, 6.
,, Influence of, 5.
,, Language of, 4.
,, Masculine and feminine,

85, 86.

„ Pictorial qualities of, 3.
,, Sanitary value of, 1.

Vernation of leaves, 153.

Vignettes, 79.

Virgil, quoted, 97, 100, 159.

Willow, 104.
Wistman's Wood, 29.
Woodpecker, 67.
Wood-sections, 127.
Wych-elm, 82.

I Yew-tree, 121.

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