WINTER BOUGHS 15 



dying year is scattered on rough winds, and the grey 

 skeleton peeps forth while yet some foliage flames 

 aloft and below. In the old days men made their 

 beds of the Autumn beech leaves, and from them 

 manufactured mattresses superior in every way — in 

 sweetness, softness, stability — to those of chaff and 

 straw ; but now no such thing happens, and the 

 leaves, fulfilling the primeval plan, flutter only to feed 

 the earth that bore them. 



Yet best of all I love the birch : that dainty maiden 

 tree of the heath and copse, of the combe and 

 dingle and forest fringe. Now she raises her silver 

 body under a veil, and stands knee-deep in the dead 

 brake fern ; her December delicacy is already some- 

 thing lost, for tiny catkins begin to take substance 

 against the purple of her young wood. 



