G86 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



side of tlio leaves white where they touched his forehead, while the thick 

 smoke of the infernal regions turned the upper surface almost black. 



Persons sacriftciug to Hercules, always wore wreaths of this tree, and 

 those who overcame their enemies in battle, were frequently crowned with 

 it in honor of Hercules. 



Under a poplar tree at the door of Tychius, the tanner of Hyle, Homer 

 used to sit aiid recite his poems. 



The Highlanders believe that the Cross of Christ was made of the wood 

 of the aspen poplar, and that consequently its leaves can never rest. 



Of the black poplar, Ovid's story is, that Phaeton having borrowed the 

 horses and chariot of the Sun, and by his careless driving setting half the 

 world on fire, was hurled by Jupiter into the river Po, where he was 

 drowned,' and his sisters, the Heliades, wandering on its banks, were turned 

 into poplars. Some, however, assert that they were turned into alders, and 

 not into poplars. 



The Akler is frequently mentioned by Homer, Virgil, and other poets. 

 Virgil, in one of his Eclogu3s, tells us that the sisters of Phaeton were 

 turned into alders. 



" The sisters mourning for their brothers' loss, 

 Their bodies hid in bark and furred with moss, 

 And each a rising alder now appears, 

 And o'er the stream distils her gummy tears." 



The willow does not appear to have been celebrated by the ancie&t poets, 

 except in the Scriptures where the sorrowing Jews are represented as 

 hanging their harps upon the willows growing on the banks of the Baby- 

 lonish streams; but the Arabians have a strange legend as to its origin 

 They relate that David, after he had married Bathsheba, was one day play- 

 ing on his harp in his private chamber, into which he had given strict 

 orders that none should be admitted to disturb his privacy, when suddenly 

 two angels made their appearance and nearly in the way related in the 

 Scriptures, convicted him of his heinous offence. David threw himself upon 

 the floor, and for forty days and forty nights shed bitter tears of repent- 

 ance, weeping and trembling before the judgment of the Lord. Moaning 

 forth psalms of repentance, in those forty daj^s and forty nights David shed 

 as many te.'trs of repentance as all the human race have shed and will shed 

 from David's time until the judgment day on account of their sins. From 

 his tears flowed two streams, which ran from the chamber into the garden, 

 where they sank into the ground, and from them sprang two trees, one of 

 which was the willow, which incessantly weeps and mourns, and the other 

 the frankincense tree, which incessantly sheds big tears each in remem- 

 brance of his sincere repentance. 



H' all the poems which have been written on the rose were collected into 

 one volume, it would be a large one, for there is scarcely a poet of eminence" 

 who has not celebrated its beauty and its fragrance which has been the 

 theme of song for nearly 3,000 years. 



In mythological legend it is almost equally rich. Anacreon makes the 

 birth of the rose coeval with that of Venus and Minerva. 



"Then, then in strange eventful hour. 

 The earth produced an infant flower, 



