68 THE POPLAR AND THE WILLOW. 



cipitancy in decision, with regard to matters far more noble and vital 

 than trees. How common, for instance, the belief that the name of 

 "poplar" applies legitimately only to that tall and spire-like and most 

 unsociable tree which is everywhere seen lifting itself in suburban 

 gardens, or forming a kind of colonnade in the hedgerow. Yet this is 

 only one out of many kinds of poplars, and neither the most important 

 kind nor, strange to say ! of the same antiquity as the others. The 

 " Lombardy poplar," by which name this spire-shaped one should 

 always be called, is only a variety of the good old-fashioned "Black." 

 Like the spire- shaped variety of the common yew, and the similar 

 variety of the furze-bush, it is a sport of nature in comparatively recent 

 times, showing over again, how full alike of play and flexibility is that 

 beautiful old "spirit of the woods" which the ancient poets half-deified, 

 converting the trees into a sisterhood of dryads. Though by no means 

 a pleasing object when standing alone, the Lombardy poplar, judiciously 

 intermingled with other trees, gives an air that no other so well supplies, 

 conferring upon the grove that same beautiful addition which is given 

 to the view of a distant city by its towers and spires. Contrasts lie at 

 the heart of all our enjoyments, and it is only by such intermixtures of 

 umbrageousness and slender loftiness that the beau ideal of sylvan charm 

 is originated in wood and forest. 



The poplars botanically so called, comprise not only this common 

 spire-like tree and its widely-branching parent, the "Old English 

 black," but also the abele and the aspen. Besides these European, 

 or at all events Asiatic forms, there are several species indigenous to 

 North America. All, except the latter, agree in the very curious 

 peculiarity of having their petioles or leaf- stalks laterally compressed at 

 the extremity next to the blade. Hence arises that pretty and incessant 

 fluttering which has made a proverb of the aspen, and which finds 

 mention even in the sacred records, though apparently connected, 

 through a mistranslation, with an entirely different tree. " When 

 thou hearest a sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees," 

 should by rights be "in the tops of the poplar-irees." Placed along- 

 side of the leaves of their near relations, the willows, poplar leaves are 

 found to be, as a rule, scarcely longer than broad, where widest ; the 

 leaves of willow-trees, on the other hand, as a rule, excel considerably 

 in length. It is worthy of notice too that while the leaves of poplar 

 trees are exceedingly prone to become vegetable skeletons, lying as they 

 do, in this condition, often by hundreds where poplar trees abound, 

 those of the willow decay in every part at once, and yield none of the 



