252 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



that have been briefly described in an earlier 

 chapter ; but, if we came to study them botanic- 

 ally, we should be surprised to find how much 

 there was to be learned about them beyond 

 the knowledge that has put us, shall I say, 

 on a friendly footing with them. Ruskin, 

 in Modern Painters, can bring in botanical 

 science to show how much more truth there is 

 in Turner's trees than in those of other painters. 

 But an uncompromising application of science 

 would show that Turner never told the whole 

 truth, nor, frequently, nothing but the truth. 



We can agree that the artist, like the ordinary 

 unscientific lover of trees, is not to be looked 

 to for minute descriptiveness. But what are 

 we to say when Turner becomes vague almost 

 to untruthfulness? This, perhaps that art has 

 its own ends to serve, and is entided to sub- 

 ordinate nature to those ends. Ruskin takes 

 the rendering of the bank of the river Wharfe 

 in one of Turner's Bolton Abbey drawings to 

 exemplify his fidelity to nature. In the small 

 water-colour vignette, done to be engraved 

 as an illustration to Rogers's poem, "The Boy 

 of Egremond," the abbey itself is summarily 

 drawn, the trees are not like those that actually 



