82 AKALIACE^ 



snow in winter, which changes to water, trickles down the walls, and never 

 thoroughly evaporates. But this is of raie occurrence, and may be prevented 

 l)y beating the ivy after snowstorms, and will only be found an inconvenience 

 when houses are built with mud. No doubt, when walls are not of sound 

 brickwork, or of some other hard materials, the Ivy may introduce its roots 

 into the masonry, and thus do mischief, allowing water to run down its 

 branches, and to follow them into the crevices where they have insinuated 

 themselves ; but in all cases of well-built houses we are convinced that Ivy 

 is beneficial, so far as keeping the walls dry." Assuredly the Ivy, with its 

 glossy verdure, never falling into the sere and yellow leaf, is a great addition 

 to the beauty of a building. Those, too, who love the songs of early birds, 

 of the cheerful robin or wren, of merry thrush or whistling blackbird, may 

 rejoice in thinking how that well-clad liough shelters the young nestlings 

 before their wings are fitted for flight, or their voices for song. Thrushes, 

 fieldfares, blackbirds, and Avood-pigeons prize the chocolate berries, which 

 are fresh and juicy when haws and hips, blackberries, and fruits of the 

 mountain-ash, have passed away. True it is that the Ivy-bough sometimes 

 shelters the owls, which may scare away our sleep by their strange and 

 mournful tones ; true it is that the spider weaves its tracery among it, and 

 sometimes finds its way into the open windows ; but, on the other hand, 

 what a store of honey do its flowers supply to bees and butterflies, when all 

 flowers save themselves are dying or dead, and when the insect world will 

 soon perish by cold or hunger, or wait, under other forms, the reviving 

 influence of spring ! Late in the year myriads of flies resort to the ivy 

 cluster, and hovering about these blossoms, on brilliant wings, may be seen 

 the Red Admiral butterfly, and the Painted Lady, and many a less showy, 

 but not less beautifully formed and tinted insect, from the sober and busy 

 bee to the golden hornet or the gauzy fly. 



But beautiful as the Ivy may be over ancient chapel or modern dwelling, 

 yet its own picturesque grace is more distinctly seen when the plant climbs 

 to the summit of the aged tree, sending out its sprays to garland every 

 bough. Few objects can be more beautiful than an Ivy so situated, especially 

 if some more light and delicate green foliage, belonging to the tree around 

 which it twines, falls down among its dark festoons. When time has stripped 

 the tree of its own leaves, or winter winds have scattered them, then, too, 

 the dark, white-veined leaves are very beautiful, and no lover of scenery can 

 fail to mark this decoration. The leaves vary much in form at different 

 periods of the growth of the plant. When young, they are three or five 

 lobed, strongly veined with white, while a degree of redness often tinges both 

 leaf and stem. As the plant grows older, the shape of the leaf differs, often 

 becoming less lobed ; and the green hue is brighter, and more glossy. The 

 plant creeps along, and sends out tufts of roots quite difterent from the line 

 of pegs by which it clings to a wall or trunk of a tree. The Ivy does not 

 merit the charge of being a parasite. It is not — 



"The Ivy which had hid the priucely trunk, 

 And siick'd the verdure out on't. " 



Its pegs are not true roots ; they are not like the roots of the mistletoe ; 



