THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 151 



be a brightness again when the stars twinkle, and 

 Endymion is bathed in the light of his love. 



The preference of the birch for a dry and airy 

 situation, combined with the matchless delicacy of 

 its figure, and its perfect penetrability by the light, 

 well adapt it also for the central ornament of a lawn 

 or large grass plot ; and beautiful is it, in the calm 

 of a summer's evening, to watch the bright round 

 moon shine through it undimmed. In old trees the 

 bark is apt to be very much broken up, and there 

 come great patches of corrugated blackness, which 

 serve, however, by the contrast, to make the silver 

 that remains still more conspicuous. In other cases 

 these tarnished parts become green with the in- 

 cipient growth of mosses. When covered up from 

 the corroding influences of the atmosphere, the 

 sheen of the bark seems indestructible, as shown 

 when lumps of ancient birch-tree wood are dug out 

 of peat-bogs. In Cheshire, it happens frequently 

 that when the peat-diggers penetrate to near the 

 bottom, they come upon boughs and branches, 

 with twigs innumerable, the interior or ligneous 

 portion brown and decayed, but the vesture as white 

 and perfect as when the tree was alive and thriving. 

 The occurrence of these remains shows the birch to 

 be one of our genuine aborigines. Where now the 

 peat-bog lies in black and wet sterility (except for 

 that brief period in high summer when it is 

 enlivened by the silver tassels of the cotton-grass, 



