TREES AND SHRUBS 117 



human culture, and a nature of second unusual interest and grandeur. There 

 growth. As with the human popula- is an appearance of common purpose 

 tion of England, so with its trees ; about all such trees grouped to a 

 there are some stocks which once single form, which gives them a strange 

 flourished far and wide across the face illusory aspect, as almost of sentient 

 of the land, and others, later comers, intelligence. From the close growth 

 which have generally thrust them of its lesser, branching twigs, and the 

 aside into waste, unregarded corners, abundance of the little cone-like seed- 

 and hold pre-eminence in their stead, vessels which cling tenaciously to their 

 Foremost among the trees and bushes hold, the alder in winter makes the 

 which have suffered the slow disin- densest pattern against the sky of all 

 heritment of expulsion are those our deciduous trees. And in April- 

 marsh-loving species, such as the sal- time, before the tardy, reluctant leaf- 

 lows, willows and alder, which once buds have more than quilled the 

 filled league after league of the prime- branches with the glint of green, the 

 val thickets of the lowland valleys tiny female blossoms, of brilliant red, 

 and plains. There are probably few may be discovered starring the twigs, 

 trees to-day less generally known than while into them, as into the similar 

 this water-loving alder. Upright and gem-like flowers of the hazel-tree, 

 stiff in growth, with a single straight the spring wind sifts the pollen from 

 stem thickly branched with horizontal the bobbing catkins as they open 

 boughs, it does not often exceed thirty to maturity in showers and sun. Other 

 feet in height, and its rounded foliage characteristic bushes of the marsh 

 is late in unfolding (like most stream- are the grey-leaved sallow, or palm- 

 side vegetation) and early in acquiring willow, with its silky knobs that swell 

 the dull, tarnished green of the later f rO m close silver to spiky gold before 

 summer woodlands. But sometimes, a green leaf is seen on any bough, and 

 in a rich soil and air, it wiU fling wne n all the sedges lie beaten in frost- 

 upwards a grand, columnar shaft to bleached swathes ; and the light, wiry 

 the height of a full-grown oak; and water-guelder, the wild original of 

 where a quadruple line of these giant the globe-flowering guelder-rose of old- 

 alders frames some dark, moorhen- fashioned gardens, which makes all 

 haunted pool, their stately evenness the hedges in the water-meadows gay 

 of growth gives them an effect of with its bold, cream-white cymes of 



