44 January — Wintry Landscape, 



IX. 



Wintry Landscape — Mummy Plants — Common Teazle — The Great 

 Mullein — Ferns and Grasses — The Blackthorn — The Whitethorn 

 — Coloring of Rushes — Mistletoe — Minute Mosses — Viburnum — 

 Splendor of Berries in Sunset Light — Mountain Ash — Hazel — 

 Structure of Trunks and Branches — Walnut — Oak — Ash — Poplar 

 — Alder — Horse-Chestnut. 



THE wintry landscape is a museum of dried vege- 

 tation, bearing much the same resemblance to 

 the verdant wealth of summer that a mummy does to 

 a living human being, yet with the difference that the 

 vegetable mummy often retains the most graceful ele- 

 gance ; and this it is to be feared, can scarcely be said 

 of any Egyptian princess, however distinguished in her 

 time. Indeed I may go so far as to assert that some 

 plants are positively more elegant as mummies than 

 they were when the sap circulated in all their vessels. 

 There is the common teazle, for example, which in 

 winter acquires a quite remarkable perfection of curva- 

 ture in all its leaves. There is a clump of them not 

 far from the Val Ste. Veronique, of which the tallest is 

 nearly eight feet high, and so very perfect and delicate 

 that if some skilful goldsmith were to copy it as it stands 

 in pure Australian gold (silver would be too chilly in 

 tint) all Paris would wonder at its loveliness. Not a leaf 

 of it but is fit to be the model for an archbishop's crozier, 

 and round the head rise the thin bracts like guards, still 

 perfect, every one of them, though the tall stem has 



