124 FAMILIAR TREES 



it is with exquisite feeling that it is made afterwards the chief 

 tree in the groves of Proserpine, its light and quivering leafage 

 having exactly the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, 

 and inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the disembodied 

 spirit. The likeness to the Poplars by the streams of Amiens is 

 more marked still in the Iliad, where the young Simois, struck by 

 Ajax, falls to the earth ' like an Aspen that has grown in an 

 irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from 

 its top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen 

 iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies 

 parching by the side of the stream.'" 



In spite, however, of Mr. Raskin's decision, Pro- 

 fessor Daubeny was of opinion that Homer's Aigeiros 

 was not the Aspen, but the Black Poplar (Po'pulus 

 ni'gra L.), on the ground that the latter is common, 

 the former not common, in Greece. Fraas, however, 

 found Aspen at an altitude of 1,800 feet on the north 

 side of Parnes and on the Achelous, and Sibthorp 

 records it in Boeotia. But we cannot help thinking 

 that any species of Poplar has sufficiently mobile 

 leaves to suggest the poet's language. 



From Homer to Thomson is indeed a fall ; but 

 there is true observation in the latter's description 

 of 



" A perfect calm ; that not a breath 

 Is heard to quiver through the closing woods, 

 Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves 

 Of Aspen tall." 



The grace of the whole tree would seem more 

 than once to have suggested the fair sex to writers on 

 the Aspen, though their remarks are* hardly compli- 

 mentary. Thus Gerard says of it : " In English 

 Aspe and Aspen-tree, and may also be called Trem- 

 ble, after the French name, considering it is the 



