The Eambles of an Idler 



most forceful expression of vegetation. Boot, 

 trunk and branches constitute the tree in that 

 literal sense loved by laziness, but what do they 

 stand for 1 They are healthy products of crea- 

 tive force. They honestly fill the purpose of 

 their being; creator and created on an equality. 

 All of that purpose is yet to be determined ; but 

 why such endless variety? Here we can wisely 

 speculate, for speculation in this direction leads 

 to the upturning of many a minor fact. 



I am sitting now in the shade of a chestnut- 

 leaved oak, lacking little of four feet in diam- 

 eter and with a spread of branches of about 

 eighty feet. A single glance tells me that the 

 tree is something more than so much wood. Its 

 story is in three chapters, roots, trunk and 

 branches, and these we cannot dissociate from 

 their immediate or even remote surroundings. 

 No form of terrestrial life shuns a tree, and in 

 South America there is a fish that climbs them. 

 Here, at home, if life does not take up its abode 

 in a tree, it is ever on it or under it. The bur- 

 rowed earth tells certainly of more than one 

 animal that is at home among the twisted roots. 

 I can see one hollow that has harbored a squir- 

 rel if it does not now, and then how these crea- 



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