FASHIONABLE TREES 49 



and dignified ; the sycamore is proud and haughty, 

 with an air of a grandee about it ; while the weeping 

 willow seems to be a tree of deep emotions, whose 

 delicate branches vibrate to every breeze. The 

 silver poplar bears beautiful little cup-shaped 

 flowers. 



The silver fir is a very artistic dresser. Its close- 

 fitting costume of refreshing green, ornamented 

 with beautiful brown cone-buttons, is very appro- 

 priate for the high mountain altitudes at which it 

 lives. 



Some of the tree-flowers discard or throw to the 

 ground the warm bud-overcoats which have shel- 

 tered them during the winter. More thoughtful 

 ones merely turn them back as a man does a collar 

 and thus create for themselves a pair of stipules. 

 Others, like the fast disappearing catalpa, are so 

 extremely artistic that they carpet the nearby 

 ground with their exquisite little flowers of yellow 

 and purple during the flowering season. Nothing 

 is more beautiful than earth strewn with catalpa 

 blossoms. 



It seems a strange thing that most of our trees 

 should blossom before they come out in leaf, yet 

 like many of the apparent anomalies of nature, 

 this fact has its foundation in necessity and con- 

 venience. A great many trees depend upon the 



