ON THE POPULARIZATION OF BOTANY 459 



in early spring from lateral scaly and globular buds, or scattered and spirally 

 arranged along the shoots of the season. Pistillate aments crimson or red, 

 rarely greenish, in flower. Cones 2-3.5 cm. long." 



There, in all its precision of modern terminology and measurement, in all 

 its admirable brevity, is the description of a well-known tree as given by my 

 deeply respected teacher, the late M. L. Fernald, in Gray's Manual, eighth 

 edition (1949). True, I have mingled the full generic description with the 

 very impoverished specific one, but I have suppressed nothing except the 

 names, Latin and vernacular. And I now ask you, without rereading it, 

 what species it describes? 



Doubtless many botanists could name it from the above analysis, and just 

 as undoubtedly others could not. And nobody, surely, could make these plant 

 parts and organs, as given above by Professor Fernald, assemble and stand 

 themselves up into a living tree. 



Now turn to Gerard and discover if Thoreau has exaggerated the old 

 herbalist's powers of delineation and his ability to make us see this same 

 species, recognizable to those who know it, and vivid, at least, even to those 

 who have never beheld it. Space does not permit a complete reproduction of 

 Gerard's words, but here are excerpts: 



''The Larch tree is of no small height, with a body [trunk] growing straight 

 up. The bark whereof in the nether part beneath the boughs is thicke, rugged, 

 and full of chinks; which being cut in sunder is red within and in the other 

 part above smooth, slipperie, something white without: it bringeth forth 

 many boughs divided into other lesser branches, which be tough and pliable. 

 The leaves are small and cut into many jags, growing in clusters thicke to- 

 gether like tassels, which fall away at the approach of Winter: the flowers or 

 rather the first shewes of the cone or fruit be round, and grow out of the 

 tenderest boughes, being at length of a grave red purple colour: the cones be 

 small, and like almost in bigness to those of the Cypress tree but longer and 

 made up of a multitude of thin scale like leaves under which the small seeds 

 having a thin velme [velum] growing on them very like to the wings of Bees 

 and wasps: the substance of the wood is very hard, of colour, especially that 

 in the midst [heartwood] somewhat red, and very profitable for workes of 

 long continuance. 



"It is not true that the wood of the larch cannot be set on fire, as Vitruvius 

 reporteth of the castle made of Larch wood, which Caesar besieged, for it 

 burneth in chimmies and is turned into coles, which are very profitable for 

 Smithes. 



"There is also gathered of the Larch tree a liquid rosin, very like in colour 

 and substance to the whiter hony of Athens or of Spaine, which notwith- 

 standing issueth not forth of itself, but runneth out of the stock of the tree, 

 when it hath been bored even to the heart with a great and long auger and 

 wimble. 



