LEAVES. 43 



out parallel. No place is more lovely in spring, 

 that is, as soon as the leaves are tolerably out ; the 

 ground is always dry, and the grasses are usually of 

 slender kinds, quite different from those of the mead- 

 ows. It is the beech that is so celebrated by the 

 poets, as the tree suited for carving letters and names 

 upon. The smooth bark adapts it for this purpose, 

 better than that of any other tree ; and not only for 

 human and veritable writing or carving, but for a very 

 beautiful imitative writing, produced by a minute plant 

 of the lichen kind, called Opegrapha. This little plant 

 presents itself in the shape of dark and irregular lines, 

 so exactly simulating Hebrew or Arabic characters, 

 that we might almost fancy them to have been in- 

 scribed by some mortal penman. Where, among the 

 works and inventions of man, his ingenious devices 

 and clever adaptations, shall we find something in 

 which nature has not anticipated him ? Nature, fresh 

 from the hand of God, is the storehouse at once of all 

 grand and beautiful ideas ; and the Fine-Arts Exhibi- 

 tion, beforehand, of everything that human skill con- 

 trives. 



After these come the oak and the ash, the former 

 with innumerable buds of an amber-brown, and by no 

 means remarkably large ; the other, with buds of a 

 sooty-black color, and found chiefly towards the ex- 

 tremities of the twigs. The ash is one of the late 

 risers ; seldom green all over until June, and hence, 



