288 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



recognise this with regard to the flowers. Is 

 there not a flower-clock? We can tell the 

 time of the day by their opening and closing. 

 And the trees are also sensitive to changes of 

 light and to heat and cold. How limply, for 

 example, hang the leaves of laurel and rhodo- 

 dendron in severe frost. And though the 

 greater part of the changes we see as the 

 minutes and hours go by, may be in appear- 

 ance only, we are right in feeling that the un- 

 conscious life of the trees is affected by them, 

 that they are enlivened by the brightness, 

 refreshed by the rain, and grow quiet in the 

 fading light. When the poets write thus of 

 them, it is not mere idle fancy. 



The changefulness is not confined to day- 

 time only. He does not know the trees fully 

 who has not been much with them in the 

 night-time. The town now allows no hard 

 and fast distinction to be drawn between day 

 and night. When it is not day it is still not 

 dark. In the true country, where no electric, 

 gas, nor oil-lamp has come to light the roads, 

 we know what darkness is. Living on the 

 outskirts of a village, where a proposal that 

 there should be oil-lamps was negatived on the 



