CATKIN-BEARING TEIBE 177 



This Poplar has in summer large drops of clear water lying upon its leaves, 

 and these only need some stirring wind to send them trickling down to 

 earth, and to remind us of Spenser's description : — 



"The Poplar uever diy. " 



The ancient poets fabled that these drops were the tears of the sisters of 

 Phaethon, who, wandering by the sides of the Po, were changed into trees : — 



" And eke those trees in wliose transformed hne 

 The Sun's sad daugliters Avail'd the rash decay 

 Of Phaethon, whose limbs with lightning rent, 

 They gathering up with sweet tears did lament." 



6. Beech {Fagus). 



Common Beech (F. sijlcdfica). — Leaves egg-shaped, smooth, very 



slightly toothed, and fringed at the margin. A green and full shadow is 



afforded to the country rambler by the crowded and usually straight 



branches of the Beech-tree, covered in summer Avith a profusion of thin 



leaves, among which many a gay bird is iluttering. Its boughs have long 



l)een celebrated for the shelter which they have given to heroes, to poets, and 



shepherds ; and the classic reader would, in some moods of mind, agree with 



Cowper — 



" Heroes and their feats 

 Fatit;ned me, never weary of the pipe 

 Of Tityrus, assembling as he sang 

 The rustic throng beneath his favourite Beech." 



As Campbell had his valued Beech-tree, which he had watched for 

 "tAventy summers," so Virgil loved one, too, for the abundant shadow which 

 it gave him. Many are the single or grouped trees which have been celebrated 

 for interesting associations, like the Burnham Beeches, beneath which Gray 

 wandered, to be soothed in his musings by the gentle whisperings of the 

 "nodding beeches," and which, he says, "are always dreaming out their old 

 stories to the winds." Then there are Saccharissa's Beeches, at Penshurst in 

 Kent, the trees which AValler apostrophised in the inflated language so 

 remote from the utterances of feeling, that it awakens no sympathy for his 

 unrequited affection : — 



" Ye lofty Beeches, tell this matchless dame, 

 That if together ye fed all one flame. 

 Ye could not equalize the hundredtli part 

 Of what her eyes have kindled in my heart." 



The Purley Beeches, believed to have grown in the time of the Conquest, 

 are interesting trees, as is that venerable tree of Windsor Forest, which Strutt 

 has engraved in his "Sylva Britannica," and which, older still, is supposed 

 to have reared its head in the time of the Saxon kings. Camden describes 

 it as " growing on a high hill (Sunning Hill), and overlooking a vale lying 

 out far and wide, garnished with corn-fields, flourishing with meadows, 

 decked with groves on either side, and watered Avith the Thames." This tree 



III.— 23 



