THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW. 57 



Not only do the poplar and the willow agree, among the Amentiferae, 

 in being dioecious, and thus differ from all their congeners; their fruit 

 or seed is also perfectly distinct from that of any other species of the 

 family, and by this alone, in the time of its ripeness, may they be 

 identified. While the oak, the beech, and the hazel, yield some kind 

 of acorn or nut, round as an egg, or curiously angled ; and while the 

 birch and the alder supply, as it were, a mimic cone, imitating, afar 

 off, the sculptured produce of the pine-tree ; these two, the willow and 

 the poplar, prepare elegant clusters of little capsules, from which, as 

 soon as they burst, is discharged an immense quantity of the whitest 



Poplar flowers. 



vegetable silk. Unfortunately, the fibre is so short as to render it 

 unavailable for manufacturing into thread, or yarn such as would be 

 adapted to the requirements of the weaver ; in its usefulness to give 

 softness to cushions and pillows it is nevertheless unequalled and 

 unapproached. The clusters of poplar seed-capsules are exactly of the 

 figure and general appearance of bunches of currants, though usually 

 much longer, attaining ordinarily four or five inches. While green, 

 every capsule is perfectly spherical, bursting in due time, by a vertical 

 and even crack, into two little halves. The capsules of the willows, on the 

 other hand, are densely packed ; individually they are conical, and, when 

 they burst, the two canoe-shaped and sharply- pointed halves are grace- 

 fully recurved. There is a further distinction found in the clusters of 

 stamen-flowers. The little scales by which the stamens are shielded 

 are in the willows smooth-edged, but in the poplars torn and ragged ; 

 and while in willows the stamens seldom exceed two in number, in 

 poplars they are at least eight, and sometimes many more. 



These delicate distinctions are rendered necessary in Botany by the 

 frequently strong resemblances which subsist in the architecture and in 

 the profile of plants, and judging by which alone, we are liable to be 

 led into error. Moreover, by carefully observing them, we find that 

 many things which apparently have little connection, prove in the end 

 to be most intimately related, and a capital hint is offered as to pre- 



