TREES 259 



shed their store? The nut tree has a certain rough, 

 scraggly quality, a clean, hard, wiry, knotted char- 

 acter, that exactly comports with bowlder-strewn pas- 

 tures, a keen October sky, and the autumn wind piping 

 over the hilltops. The great oak of the pastures, also, 

 flings its outlines against the cloud-race and the blue 

 with magnificent masculinity, and the dignity of age 

 and power. 



The canoe birch, too, is essentially an upland tree; 

 it does not thrive near sea level, at any rate in Mass- 

 achusetts. Farther north it creeps down nearer the 

 coast. The birch, above all our American trees, de- 

 lights in theatrical effects. And if that sentence is 

 objected to on the ground of "pathetic fallacy," we will 

 commit the whole sin at once, and add that it is the 

 most feminine of trees! In earliest Spring, when 

 the hepaticas are pushing up last year's leaves and our 

 Berkshire mountain sides are donning their frail, deli- 

 cate veils of colour, the young birches are conspicuous 

 for the startling brightness of their new foliage, a 

 green so much lighter and more vivid than all the other 

 greens that it would arrest attention even if it were 

 not borne on a snow-white stem. Your young birch 

 has all the daring of a debutante! Later, when the 

 summer thunder-storms come, the birch has another 

 trick up its sleeve. Some afternoon a dark, gunmetal 

 thunder-head will mass behind the crest of a hill, and 

 suddenly an old birch on the summit will leap into 



