CATKIN-BEAKING TRIBE 173 



the snowy whiteness of the foliage of the Abele. It is of slower gi^owth 

 than any other of our Poplai^s, and yields the best wood of them all. The 

 boarded floors which still, in Norfolk, retain their old Norman name of 

 jjlnnchers, are commonly made of it ; and it is thought, for many purposes, 

 to be scarcely inferior to the wood of the Norway fir. Sir J. E. Smith says 

 that it will not readily take fire like resinous woods. It is regarded as a 

 sub-species of P. alba, or a hybrid between that and P. tremula. 



3. Aspen or Trembling Poplar (P. tr^muIa). — Young branchlets 

 hairy ; leaves roundish, toothed, down}' when 3'oung ; footstalks flattened. 

 Who of us, accustomed to notice plants, has not on a summer-day, at some 

 time or other, looked up wonderingly into the Aspen-tree, when it was 

 quivering and rustling into gentle music, and marvelled where was the breeze 

 which bade it answer to its touch ? It must indeed be a dead calm, when 

 Thomson's description could be true : — 



" A perfect calm ; that not a breath 

 Is heard to quiver through the closing woods, 

 Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves 

 Of Aspen tall." 



How often, as we have looked upon its tall, slender canopy of drooping 

 branches, rustling so tremulously, has the mind recurred to the old associa- 

 tions connected with the tree ! The ancients are said to have called the 

 Poplar Populus, the Tree of the People, because its readily-moved and ever- 

 stirring leaves were, like the ever-restless multitude, quickened into action 

 by the slightest breath ; and a Poplar of one species or another has always 

 been regarded in modern times as the Tree of the People. It may not have 

 been the Aspen Poplar especially to which the ancients referred, though this 

 is the most easily moved by the zephyrs of any of the species ; but there is 

 good reason for believing that this is the plant intended by the Scripture 

 writer of a passage of David's histoiy, though rendered by our translators 

 by another name. "Let it be," said the great Jehovah to the Israelitish 

 warrior, "when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry- 

 trees, that thou shouldst bestir thyself;" but it was perchance to the 

 quivering Aspen, which adonis so plentifully the ravines of Palestine, that 

 David looked for the indication. The ancients, too, said of the foliage, that 

 it might be likened to the unceasing course of time. Pliny remarks, "As for 

 the Aspen-tree, or White Poplar, it maketh little or no shade at all, the 

 leaves keep such a wagging and trembling." Old Gerarde, too, with little 

 gallantry, refers to the restless leaves, and says, " It may be called Tremble, 

 after the French name, considering it is the matter whereof women's tongues 

 were made ;" but he takes care to shield himself from some replying woman's 

 tongue by adding, that, "as the poets and some others report, these seldom 

 cease wagging." Our earliest poets, as well as the moderns, refer to it. 

 Chaucer says — 



" And quake as doth the leaf of Aspen green ;" 



while Spenser tells of one 



" Whose hand did quake 

 And tremble like the leaf of Aspen greene." 



