THE ASPEN 123 



its shade but very slightly injurious to any plants 

 beneath it. The profusion of suckers springing from its 

 roots, however, makes the Aspen an undesirable tree 

 for lawns, meadows, or hedgerows. They yield an 

 abundant supply of faggots, or poles, if the tree be 

 treated as coppice-wood, and cut down either every 

 seven or eight, or every fifteen or twenty years. The 

 rapid growth and usefully-moderated shade of this 

 species adapt it well to act as a " nurse " in moist 

 woodlands for the Oak or Beech ; and it may be 

 propagated either by cuttings or, more readily, by 

 seed. 



It is, however, chiefly for the grace and beauty of 

 the grey bark of its stem and its rustling leaves that 

 the Aspen is now valued. This rustling of the leaves, 

 which are scarcely ever still even in the stillest air, is 

 the most striking feature of the tree, and the point 

 of most allusions to it in literature. Mr. Ruskin, in 

 whose " Modern Painters " the Aspen is treated with 

 such loving detail, when discussing Homer's treat- 

 ment of landscape, writes as follows on the scene 

 between Ulysses and Nausicaa : 



" The spot to which she directs him is another ideal piece of 

 landscape, composed of a ' beautiful grove of Aspen Poplars, a 

 fountain, and a meadow,' near the roadside ; in fact, as nearly 

 as possible such a scene as meets the eye of the traveller every 

 instant on the much-despised lines of road through lowland France 

 for instance, on the railway between Arras and Amiens : scenes 

 to my mind quite exquisite in the various grouping and grace of 

 their innumerable Poplar avenues, casting sweet tremulous shadows 

 over their level meadows and labyrinthine streams. We know 

 that the princess means Aspen Poplars, because soon afterwards 

 we find her fifty maid-servants at the palace, all spinning, and in 

 perpetual motion, compared to the ' leaves of the tall Poplar ' ; and 



