THE BIRCH AND THE ALDER. 



IT is curious that two trees of physiognomy so 

 entirely different as the birch and the alder should 

 nevertheless correspond closely in the minutiae of 

 botanical structure. Not that the instance is a 

 solitary one, or without many parallels. What more 

 unlike, for example, than the Pyrola and the heather 

 the former a little herbaceous plant, the lily-of- 

 the-valley of the seaside sand-hills; the heather a 

 tough and wiry undershrub of wastes and mountain 

 solitudes. At the close of an autumn evening, the 

 Pyrola (which often mingles with the grass-of- 

 Parnassus) exhales an odour so powerful that by this 

 alone may be found the beautiful white forests 



