n6 April — Aspen Poplar. 



quite congenial situation. It is a great world of flowers, 

 and the bees are constantly going and coming between 

 it and their hives. Not only what are popularly called 

 flowers may produce an effect, but even the less generally 

 admired catkins may under certain circumstances acquire 

 pictorial importance. One of the finest sights at the 

 beginning of April is a tall aspen poplar in full morning 

 sunshine, with its thousands of pendent catkins, which 

 at a little distance take a rich dark crimson tint, and 

 strikingly contrast with the light gray stem and branches. 

 But the stem of the aspen is not to be compared with 

 that of the .silvery birch, which is one of the master- 

 pieces of Nature. Every thing has been done to heighten 

 its unrivalled brilliance. The horizontal peeling of the 

 bark, making dark rings at irregular distances, the brown 

 spots, the dark color of the small twigs, the rough text- 

 ure near the ground, and the exquisite silky smoothness 

 of the tight white bands above, offer exactly that variety 

 of contrast which makes us feel a rare quality like that 

 smooth whiteness as strongly as we are capable of feeling 

 it. And amongst the common effects to be seen in all 

 northern countries, one of the most brilliant is the oppo- 

 sition of birch trunks in sunshine against the deep blue 

 or purple of a mountain distance in shadow. At all 

 seasons of the year the beauty of the birch is attractive, 

 and peculiarly its own. The young beech may remind 

 you of it occasionally under strong effects of light, and 

 is also very graceful, but we have no tree that rivals the 

 birch in its own qualities of color and form, still less 

 in that air and bearing which are so much more difficult 



