X. THE BARK. 



191 



earth by earthquake, in the wars of the giants. 

 In the middle of that word ' esmaragese,' we 

 get our own beggar's ' rag ' for a pure root, 

 which afterwards, through the Latin frango, softens 

 into our 'break,' and 'bark/ — the 'broken thing'; 

 that idea of its rending around the tree's stem 

 having been, in the very earliest human efforts 

 at botanical description, attached to it by the pure 

 Aryan race, watching the strips of rosy satin break 

 from the birch stems, in the Aberfeldys of Imaus. 



3. That this tree should have been the only one 

 which " the Aryans, coming as conquerors from 

 the North, were able to recognize in Hindostan,"* 

 and should therefore also be " the only one whose 

 name is common to Sanskrit, and to the languages 

 of Europe," delighted me greatly, for two reasons : 

 the first, for its proof that in spite of the develop- 

 ment of species, the sweet gleaming of birch stem 

 has never changed its argent and sable for any 

 unchequered heraldry ; and the second, that it gave 

 proof of a much more important fact, the keenly 

 accurate observation of Aryan foresters at that early 

 date ; for the fact is that the breaking of the thin- 

 beaten silver of the birch trunk is so delicate, and its 

 smoothness so graceful, that until I painted it with 



* Lectures on the Families of Speech, by the Rev. F. Faner. 

 Longman, 1870. Page 81. 



