158 May Prejudices against Trees. 



beverage is prepared from it. Haller says that the cat- 

 kins yield wax. Therefore, although the birch does not 

 give fine timber like the oak, nor abundant edible fruit 

 like the walnut and what are commonly called the fruit- 

 trees, it is still one of man's best friends, and a friend 

 to him in climates of such rigorous severity that the 

 rich southern fruit-bearers cannot live there. The 

 Southerner may know the birch by sight, for its slender 

 stem gleams here and there in his forests ; but he does 

 not know the tree as the Laplander knows it, in the 

 hardship and adversity of a life so little cheered by the 

 genial gifts of Nature. What the reindeer is to him 

 amongst animals, the birch is amongst trees. 



I spoke about the suitableness of the horse-chestnut 

 for the purposes of the landscape-painter, and I showed 

 a reason why artists have so generally abstained from 

 any attempt to represent the horse-chestnut in their 

 works. But if there are reasonable objections to trees 

 that may be beautiful in Nature, there are also unreason- 

 able ones, that are due to the most absurd prejudices, 

 prejudices so absurd that the existence of them would 

 be absolutely incredible if we did not meet them from 

 time to time in reading and in conversation. One of 

 the clearest and most outspoken expressions of such 

 prejudices that it was ever my lot to meet with occurred 

 in an ultra-conservative French newspaper, which is 

 taken in by my neighbor the curt, and I made an ex- 

 tract from it as a curiosity. It is certain that many 

 trees and the graceful birch is one of them were 

 systematically neglected by the landscape-painter of 



