208 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



traveller, who was promised a great refreshing by the application. 

 The leaves and young shoots are eaten by cows, goats, horses 

 and sheep, and Linnaeus remarks that the tongues of these 

 animals turn black when they eat the leaves and shoots of the 

 alder. The most interesting fact connected with the birch is 

 that it was supposed to have provided the first writing paper in 

 the shape of its bark. According to Pliny, the celebrated books 

 which Numa Pompilius composed in 700 B.C., and which were 

 buried with him, were written on the bark of the birch tree. 

 The aspen is famous on account of the tradition among 

 Highlanders that the Cross was made of the wood of this poplar ; 

 that the leaves shiver mystically in sympathy with the mother 

 tree; while there is a beautiful fable connected with the large 

 drops of clear water often found on the leaves of the black poplar 

 in summer, that they are the tears of the sisters of Phaeton, who, 

 while wandering on the banks of the Po, were changed into 

 poplars. It only requires some stirring of the wind to send 

 these tears trickling down to earth. 



12. Such are a few, a very few indeed, of the many legends 

 and traditions connected with trees. In the brief survey of these 

 that we have made we are struck by the important role which 

 trees must have played in ancient times. From the examples 

 reviewed, it seems that direct and absolute tree-worship may 

 lie very wide and deep in the early history of religion. At the 

 present day, it looks as if we had lost something, and the loss 

 has spoiled our appreciation of many an old poetic theme. It 

 may not be that we need to reproach ourselves with decline in 

 poetic taste, for it is not our sense of the beautiful which has 

 dwindled but the old animistic philosophy of nature that is gone 

 from us, dissipating from these stories their meaning, and with 

 their meaning their loveliness. We still possess the ability to 

 appreciate the beautiful in trees, and also the ability to 

 appreciate the influence trees have on our minds. This influence 

 is always a beneficial one. Just compare the difference of 

 feeling created, even in the mind of the least sentimental of 

 persons, on passing through a bare country without a tree for 

 miles around and on wandering, especially in a warm summer 

 day, through a country where fields and meadows alternate with 

 inviting woodlands. One has but to turn to the lives of the 

 poets, for instance, to find the inspiring influence which trees 

 had on their work. Dr Samuel Johnson has made one willow 



