62 



bark give a peculiar feature to such upland spots, while the boiste- 

 rous stream makes its everlasting cry among the dark pebbles that 

 encumber its bed -beneath the rude and tottering foot-bridge. Dr. 

 Bromfield has suggested that the aspen {Populus tremula) is the 

 only poplar of those rej^uted British, that " occurs in the middle of 

 our large woods remote from the inclosed country." It is true enough 

 that the aspen is common enough in a small form in almost every 

 extensive wood. But we must look to the peculiar character of the 

 gray and white poplars. They are not trees of the forest, but delight 

 to form societies of their own on the banks of streams or on the mar- 

 gin of marshy heaths. Here they appear as Nature intended them, 

 giving a characteristic feature to the barren, sloppy flats, that have 

 scarcely any other trees to countenance them but scraggy, stunted 

 and fissured willows ; and when the autumnal breeze blusters among 

 their silvery leaves what a pleasing effect is produced before the eye 

 of the lone wanderer in such places. I find the gray poplar scattered 

 more or less on all our moist Worcestershire heaths, and abundant in 

 several yet uncultivated parts of Malvern Chace, for even if cut down 

 occasionally, suckers from the roots quickly overspread the ground, 

 forming a young shrubbery, and bearing monstrous leaves, excessively 

 white beneath. As far as I have noticed, the white and gray poplars 

 are not common in Wales, but I have notes of C. canescens as occur- 

 ring at Pelcombe, near Haverfordwest, and near Cannington Bridge, 

 Pembrokeshire. 



With respect to the black poplar {P. nigra), surely its wide distri- 

 bution throughout Britain, as remarked by Selby, is " strongly in 

 favour of its being indigenous." Indeed, except from the fact that 

 black Italian poplars are now generally planted in shrubberies, I can 

 conceive no solid reason for blackening the character of P. nigra. 

 Nothing is more common on the winding woody banks of our roving 

 and bubbling Worcestershire brooks than old, tortuous, cracky trees 

 of the black-poplar, with grotesque pollarded heads, that look like 

 demons against the evening sky, with the furrows of hundreds of 

 wintry storms upon their sides. Far more enduring than the willows, 

 beside which they meditate, they remain firm amidst the catastrophes 

 that so often upset the disembowelled trunks of those fragile trees, 

 and really form some of our noblest dryadean inhabitants by watery 

 places. I have noticed some twenty feet in circumference, and on the 

 banks of the Severn at the Lower Lode, near Tewkesbury, is a grove 

 of very old black poplars, so lofty that a rookery has been located in 

 them beyond the recollection of anyone now living. It is remarkable 



