FRUITS AND AUTUMNAL DAYS. 71 



plant is there, though it may be only in miniature, as 

 happens with young forest-trees, and often with young 

 trees that are grown for their economic value in gar- 

 dens and orchards ; for every species of plant has a 

 configuration of its own ; is built, so to speak, upon 

 a definite and prescribed model, the dimensions of 

 which may be enlarged, and prodigiously so, as years 

 roll over the world, but which is never materially 

 departed from. The poplar, that when full grown 

 towers above most of the surrounding trees, shooting 

 up vertically, yet withal so unsociably, and giving the 

 same pleasant idea in the landscape that spires and 

 columns do in the view of a large town from the hill- 

 side, this tree, in its youngest state, is a kind of 

 living photograph of its tallest ancestor, presenting 

 all the characters that in the mature one are merely 

 repeated, without being in any degree diversified. 

 This general figure and physiognomy are realized by 

 the time the plant begins to show its blossoms. The 

 latter seldom appear before, unless under some con- 

 straining influence that hurries the plant to early 

 death, as when it grows on some dry wayside, or on 

 some scorched and sunburnt cliff, whence every parti- 

 cle of moisture is rapidly evaporating, and then, it is 

 true, an effort is often made to produce a seed rather 

 than die childless. For here, as in other ways, the 

 . plant gives us a profound and beautiful lesson. It is 

 not dying that is dreadful, or to be looked on with 



