6 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



any more than we human beings are mere food 

 for worms if there be no after life for us. 

 There are animal painters who humanise the 

 animals they represent ; and we do not thank 

 them for so doing, unless they do it by way of 

 jest. The interest of the lower animals to us is 

 that they are in so many ways like us and yet 

 are not of us. And so it is with the trees. Their 

 life is in many ways like ours ; and yet at how 

 great a distance below us their evolution has 

 been arrested ! The highest animals are so far 

 below us that, when in some ways they come 

 near to us, the distance in other ways becomes 

 even acutely pathetic. Vegetable and animal 

 life seem in certain cases almost to overlap; 

 yet, in the main, how wide is the gulf between 

 them ! It is not by pretending the trees to be 

 human that we can become and continue keenly 

 interested in them ; but by seeing and feeling 

 both their likeness to us and their difference 

 from us. 



In what ways are they like us? They are 

 born, grow to maturity, fail and then die. 

 They draw nourishment from earth and air ; 

 and by its aid are formed the myriad cells of 

 which they are built up ; the nutriment being 



