THE LINDEN 91 



drooping boughs from the ground to their summits 

 eighty or ninety feet in height, so as to present a 

 grand columnar aspect. Then, as the poet says 



"All about the large Lime feathers low 

 Tli2 Lime, a summer home of murmurous wings." 



They may reach five, or even nine, feet in 

 diameter, the latter being the size of the famous tree 

 that gave the town of Neustadt, in Wlirtemberg, the 

 name of " Neustadt an der grossen Linden." At 

 Harste, near Gottingen, a tree known as the old 

 Linden in 1425, measured 27J feet in circumference 

 in 1871. The delicate leaves are lop-sided, heart- 

 shaped, and gracefully toothed along their margins ; 

 the greenish flowers, overflowing with honey and 

 sweetly scented, are borne in stalked clusters of from 

 three to seven on a curious adherent, leaf-like bract 

 which becomes of a buff tint; and the fruits that 

 succeed them are small spherical capsules, which but 

 rarely, however, ripen in England. 



Of the various forms, the Small-leaved Linden 

 (Tilia cordata Mill.) occurs in our woods from York- 

 shire southwards, and is also wild in Siberia and 

 throughout Europe, with the exception of Turkey 

 and Greece. It has smooth, yellowish-brown twigs ; 

 its smooth leaves are seldom more than two and a 

 half inches across, and are smooth on their under 

 surfaces, with the exception of tufts of yellowish hair 

 at the forks of the veins; and the capsule is faintly 

 marked with ribs when ripe. The Intermediate 

 Linden (T. interme'dia DC.), which is the one most 

 largely planted, occurs over the same area as the last, 



