118 NATURE AND THE POETS. 



This is exactly the appearance the roots of most 

 trees, when uncovered, present ; they flow out from 

 the trunk like diminishing streams of liquid metal, 

 taking the form of whatever they come in contact 

 with, parting around a stone and uniting again be- 

 yond it, and pushing their way along with many a 

 pause and devious turn. One principal office of the 

 roots of a tree is to gripe, to hold fast the earth ; 

 hence they feel for and lay hold of every inequality 

 of surface ; they will fit themselves to the top of a 

 comparatively smooth rock, so as to adhere amaz- 

 ingly, and flow into the seams and crevices like metal 

 into a mould. 



Lowell is singularly true to the natural history of 

 his own county. In his " Indian-Summer Reverie " 

 we catch a glimpse of the hen-hawk, silently sailing 

 overhead 



"With watchful, measuring eye," 

 the robin feeding on cedar berries, and 



"The squirrel, on the shingly shag-bark's bough." 



I do not remember to have met the " shag-bark " in 

 poetry before, or that gray lichen-covered stone wall 

 which occurs farther along in the same poem, and 

 which is so characteristic of the older farms of New 

 York and New England. I hardly know what the 

 poet means by 



" The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee," 



as the mowers do not wade in the grass they are cut- 

 ting, though they might appear to do so when viewed 



