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THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 



IT is curious that two trees of physiognomy so entirely different as 

 the birch and the alder should nevertheless correspond closely in the 

 minutias of botanical structure. Not that the instance is a solitary one, 

 or without many parallels. What more unlike," for example, than the 

 Pyrola and the heather the former a delicate little herbaceous plant, 

 the lily-of-the-valley of the seaside sand-hills ; the heather a tough and 

 wiry undershrub of wastes and mountain solitudes. At the close of an 

 autumn evening the Pyrola (which often mingles with the grass-of- 

 Parnassus) exhales an odour so powerful that by this alone may be 

 found the beautiful white forests which come of its plenty, even did 

 they not gleam in the distance like drifts of summer snow ; and in this 

 particular we get the first suggestion of a possible affinity with the 

 heather-tribe, one of which, called Clethra arborea, seems surely to 

 have been scented from the same fountain. Examined in the light, 

 the individual blossoms show likeness again to those of the Clethra ; 

 the Clethra in turn discloses points of affinity with the heather ; and at 

 last we find that all these plants are but varied utterances of a single 

 idea. The same may be said of the Parnassia and the golden -saxifrage ; 

 of clover and the sweet-pea ; of the cinquefoil, the strawberry, and the 

 rose. Where externals seem to betoken widest unlikeness, if not abso- 

 lute isolation, presently, on asking of the innermost heart, there dawns 

 upon us the sense of a most exquisite consanguinity. It is the old, old 

 deathless fable of Proteus over again the "transformation" scene 

 which no pantomime can ever compete with. 



While curious, accordingly, that the birch and alder should be so 

 unlike in their intimate likeness, it is curious only in the same sense 

 that a thousand different melodies are all delightful. The variety and 

 the novelty are not the only charm ; that which enchants is the native 

 and inalienable sweetness and feeling, and which holds us as deeply 

 when long familiar as in the beginning. It is a grand secret in the art 

 of estimating things aright, that the best is not that which fascinates 

 on the first view, but that which waxes lovelier the longer it abides 



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