16 THE OAK. 



up its finger, as it were, and beckoning, has allured them into one of 

 those sweet side-chapels of the great cathedral, which, when a man has 

 once entered, he never desires to leave. There wrfs a famous fable in 

 olden time of a country in which grew lotus-trees. When travellers 

 entered that country, and tasted of the fruit, they were overpowered 

 with an indefinable and delicious longing to remain there always, not 

 necessarily to be always eating lotus, but to enjoy the heavenly climate 

 and atmosphere that produced it. That country, with its lotus-trees, 

 has not been blotted out. The fable, like every other true one, is for 

 all time. Living nature, everywhere round about us, is the country of 

 the lotus, and the fruit is the serene and innocent delight, with innu- 

 merable sweet teachings for our intelligence, that comes of our looking 

 at it reverently and lovingly. The beckoning thus given is always 

 remembered with pleasure. Fries, the great German writer upon fungi, 

 tells us how he was attracted to the study of that class of plants, by 

 the lustre of the crimson Dryads' cup, by botanists called Peziza coccinea, 

 which in the earliest days of spring appears on dead branches in damp 

 woods and groves, and resembles an immense acorn-chamber of the 

 loveliest coral-red. No slight pleasure is it to another botanist, albeit 

 a mere stripling by the side of Fries, to view, over again and yet once 

 more, year by year, in forest-glades, where the trees are companions, 

 that pretty and simple fern that captured his imagination in early 

 youth. The oak seems to take pride in holding the fern in its giant 

 arms ; the fern shows us beautifully how the grandest thing in nature 

 may still be enriched by the simplest, just as great men, gifted with 

 the might of wisdom, and able to pour forth in unbroken streams, 

 music that makes our very soul come up and sit listening in our ears, 

 still delight to be clasped by the sweet tendrils of simple hearts, to 

 watch and help their little strivings after the amiable and the true, to 

 listen to their innocent songs, and to bless them with their bountiful 

 protection. 



The fern upon the oak must not be confounded with that one speci- 

 fically termed "oak-fern," and technically called Dryopteris ; nor yet 

 must it be confounded with another which gives a quaint resemblance 

 to the oak in the section of its stem. "Oak-fern" has no peculiar 

 connection with oak-trees, and is as often found far away from them as 

 near. It is so called because the general outline or profile, when a leaf 

 is laid flat, gives a pleasing idea of that of an oak standing alone in its 

 pride, and viewed from a distance. This fact of resemblance in outline 

 between things in other respects totally unconnected, is one of the most 



