12G FAMILIAR TREES 



This constant agitation of the foliage by the least 

 breath of wind, owing to the unusual length and 

 flattened form of the leaf-stalk, though common to 

 the whole genus, is most conspicuous in the case of 

 the Aspen. To it the tree owes its French name, and 

 it is explained scientifically by the length of the 

 slender leaf-stalk and its lateral compression, so that 

 the broad and heavy leaf is suspended on a sup- 

 port which is itself readily acted on by the smallest 

 atmospheric movement. The rustling noise, as of a 

 babbling brook, is, of course, produced by the friction 

 of the leaves on one another. 



In March or April the bare grey boughs or 

 brownish shoots are thickly covered with catkins, and 

 the male ones produce a general effect of warm vinous 

 red. When the foliage appears, associations of refresh- 

 ing coolness and of laughing mirth, suggested by the 

 resemblance of the sound made by the leaves to the 

 music of a brook, mingle, as we gaze at their pallid 

 colour, and as the rising wind changes the rippling 

 laugh into a long drawn sigh, with those of the deepest 

 melancholy. When autumn, its "gold hand gilding 

 the falling leaf," spread its badge of splendid decay 

 over each leaf in succession, the tree gains in variety 

 of colour, but its rustling gives it even a more 

 melancholy effect than it had before. 



The soft woods of all the Poplars are naturally 

 very liable to the burrowing of insect larva?. The 

 caterpillars of the Goat-moth (Cos'sus ligniper'da) and 

 the Wood Leopard (Zeu'zera ce'sculi) are among the 

 most destructive. Entomologists also associate the 

 Poplars with the beautiful Poplar Hawk - moth 



