Lake Maxinkuckee, Physical and Biological Survey 277 



but throughout the entire year, the aspen tree is one of peculiar 

 charm. It is one of the few trees whose leaves appear in spring 

 with a distinct freshness and newness. Most of our leaves come 

 out rusty or scurfy or red and wait until the protecting fuzz of 

 winter wears off before they grow into the green of summer, but 

 the aspen puts forth young leaves of the brightest, freshest green 

 imaginable at the very first, and more than any other tree of the 

 wood, gives a distinct sense of newness to the world. 



It would be wasting words to attempt to describe the incessant 

 dancing of its leaves during the summer. It, even more than the 

 trembling of the reeds, is "an eloquent pantomime of terror" and, 

 as in related species, "taking to man's eye" as early as the days 

 of Homer, and commemorated as a type of variableness in one of 

 the lines of Scott. The church fathers, perhaps always on the look- 

 out for symbols, or inventing fairy tales to help keep in memory the 

 landmarks of faith, invented the tale that it was the wood of this 

 tree of which the cross was made. 



In form and feature, too, it is the most picturesque of trees. Not 

 alone the details of the snow white bark and fresh clear green are 

 restful to the eye, but the very outline of the tree, its silhouette 

 against the sky, has a distinct personality and has an atmosphere of 

 its own, like one of Corot's paintings. 



In the autumn, it is remarkable how, in protected situations, it 

 retains its leaves with their summer verdure. In this respect they 

 almost equal the tamarack, and the broad leaves still fluttering 

 and glancing long after the maples have reddened and shed, and 

 after the oaks are naked or rustling and sere, one may lie beneath 

 the green aspens, and, closing the eyes to everything but the white 

 trunks, the green leaves and the sky, and be transported from late 

 October to the midst of June. 



When at last the leaves prepare to fall, they turn to the purest 

 gold. And after the leaves have fallen and the trees are bare, noth- 

 ing fits in so well with the gray days of late autumn — the days of 

 mist and whirling snow ; they mingle and melt into the scene as if 

 they were themselves the embodiment of the days. 



But they are not wholly barren for long, if ever at all, for 

 early in winter their catkins peep out of sheaths as if im- 

 patient of the far-off spring. There is a real furriness about those 

 gray catkins that the pussy willows, still snugly hidden, can not ap- 

 proach at their best, and the bud scales about them are odorous 

 with balsamic fragrance. No other tree that we know is so 

 entertaining in the depths of winter. With the first touch of 



