THE HAWTHORN. 



CRAT^EGUS OXYACANTHA. 



Natural Order ROSACES. 



Class IGOSANDBIA. Order PENTAGYNIA. 



THERE is, I think, no tree the simple mention of which 

 excites such pleasurable emotions as the Hawthorn. Never 

 attaining a remarkable size, neither stately in growth, nor 

 graceful in form, it yet possesses an interest to which many 

 a loftier and more elegant child of the forest cannot aspire. 

 We may see it applied to the most homely and unromantic 

 purposes, clipped by the hedger's shears of every particle of 

 natural spray, and reduced, as it were by line and plummet, 

 to the uniform proportions of a mere verdant wall; yet 

 the tree to which the mind reverts when the Hawthorn is 

 mentioned is independent of any such associations. It 

 does not, it is true, carry us away to forests or woodland 

 mountains, to the wild fastnesses of Nature, where men and 

 the things of men have no place. Were we acquainted 

 with it only in such situations, it would want half its 

 interest ; but it recurs to the memory as the necessaiy 

 appendage of the village, to which, in our earlier years, it 

 was our highest privilege to make our holiday excursions 

 the veteran record of our infantile sports, remaining un- 

 changed while the stern realities of life have been working 

 in ourselves a change too perceptible a common shelter 

 from sun or shower to the rude patriarchs of the hamlet, 

 the same group (nearly, for some are not) that half a century 

 ago tottered as feebly to their childish amusements as now 

 ihey do to their shady seat beneath its branches, and from 

 the self-same cabins too and the contemporary of all the 

 bygone sports that old and young loved to look back upon, 

 or forward to, with equal interest. 



The Hawthorn, too, is a tree which, from its association 



