THE BUDS AND BLOSSOM OF TREES 151 



ash, or the pink flowers which stud the larch boughs 

 like sea-anemones. These are blossoms which appear 

 on the naked limbs of trees. Later, among the young 

 leaves of the oak and sycamore, the bunches of pale- 

 yellow bloom are confused with the young leaf ; and it 

 is not till the ground below the last is piled with 

 golden, dustlike petals that we wonder whence they 

 came, and what the flower was like that bore them. 



One only among the hundred buds of trees is well 

 known, and used for ornament in England the 

 " palms " which are gathered by every stream and 

 pond the week before Palm Sunday. Even they have 

 as many phases of beauty as the rose ; first, the tiny 

 pearl-like studs of satin-white ; then egg-shaped buds 

 bound in grey plush like the lining of an opera-cloak ; 

 and lastly, rounded golden thimbles, set with tiny 

 blossoms. Or to follow the fancy of the Cheshire 

 children, the young buds are the goose's-eggs, and the 

 golden flowers the goslings, hatched by the hot March 

 sun, and bending to the river. But the beauty of the 

 buds of trees is almost invisible against the sky. They 

 are lifted too far from the eye, and their forms are too 

 minute and their colours too pale to break across the 

 line of sight and play a part in broad effects of sylvan 

 beauty. To be appreciated in mass the buds of trees 

 must be viewed from above, from the opposite side of 

 a glen, or in a copse below the observer. In the deep 

 woods which cluster at the foot of the Hind Head, in 

 the broken hollows near Haslemere, the millions of 

 buds and catkins so pervade the upper level of the 



