CHAPTER III 



TREES IN NATURE 



IT might seem as if we should be abandon- 

 ing poetry for prose, the dawn-light of 

 imagination for the noonday - light of fact, 

 in leaving tree-myths to study the trees as 

 we see them and think about them — and make 

 quite ordinary use of them — to-day. If it 

 be so the fault will lie with us. We shall 

 provide the prose ; nature knows none of 

 it. It is true that we shall often get into 

 the land of myth again. We shall have to 

 note the beliefs that have been held with 

 reference to particular trees. But this apart, 

 the study of tree-life and character is not a 

 prosaic thing, even if pursued in the laborious 

 way of modern science. Such scientific study, 

 however, does not lie before us here, at least, 

 not in this chapter ; and there will be but little 

 of it in any part of the book. When Pope 

 said that the proper study of mankind was 



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