THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAVES. 



793 



THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAVES. 



By F. SCHUYLER MATHEWS. 



WHILE we admire and enjoy the greenness and the general 

 effect of foliage^ and regard the forms of single trees if 

 they are particularly graceful or otherwise peculiar in shape, we 

 seldom give special attention to individual leaves, but are rather 

 inclined to neglect them as common and trivial. Yet, as Mr. F. 

 Schuyler Mathews * well says, while they may be common, " they 

 are far from commonplace. If we doubt this, let us try to draw 

 or paint a single leaf. Only a great artist can depict oil of some 

 one of its manifold truths ; one may draw ever so carefully and 



Fig. 1. — White Pine, Leaf at A. 



well, yet he can not tell with the pencil or the brush all the truth 

 and beauty of one leaf. Its color is too waxen and pure to be 

 imitated by earthy pigments ; its outline is too subtile, its teeth 

 are too finely and vigorously formed, and its veins are too infi- 

 nitely complex for one to copy with absolute, lifelike accuracy. 

 No, it is not possible to portray all the beauty of a leaf with the 

 pencil. Yet this work of Nature's wonderful art is common : the 



* Familiar Trees and their Leaves. By F. Schuyler Mathews, 

 by Prof. L. H. Bailey. Published by D. Appleton & Co. 



With an Introduction 



