60 SYLVAN WINTER. 



striking robustness and uprightness. There is 

 then no spray, for all the shoots are stout, and 

 the ramification is simple and'' not abundant. At 

 the base of each branch and twig the skin is 

 curiously wrinkled, like the cast skin of a silk- 

 worm, and immediately under each branch and 

 offshoot is the strange-looking mark so strikingly 

 like the figure of a horse-shoe, namely, a half- 

 disc with a row around its curved edge of spots 

 like the nails placed in the shoe of a horse. It is 

 doubtless this very peculiar appearance which has 

 obtained for this tree the otherwise inappropriate 

 name of the Horse Chestnut. 



The contorted, picturesque Hawthorn, with its 

 twisted trunk and its twisted, spreading head, 

 must not be forgotten in our examination of 

 wintry trees that denude themselves of foliage to 

 exhibit the beauty of their form. As a bush or 

 shrub the Hawthorn is very familiar to everybody, 

 but usually in a form clipped out of its natural 

 and normal shape to meet the exigencies of a field 

 or garden fence. In the forest alone does it grow 

 in full freedom and assume its tree-form, and then 

 it may boast a bole nine feet in circumference, 



