Trees, Shrubs and Vines 
How inherently graceful and how incorrigibly un- 
gainly different species are! What provincialism in the 
apple-tree, that never had an ungracious thought in its 
life, and what a type of an exquisite the tulip-tree is ; 
yet the latter is an utterly loveless creature, while the 
homely apple-tree’s dear old deformities are buried 
fathoms deep in virtues. 
One cannot study trees without being quickly re- 
minded how nature’s changeful temperament is echoed 
or reflected in everything around him. Clouds mass 
themselves according to season; winds know the time 
of the year, and tune their airs accordingly ; Novem- 
ber sighs are never heard in summer nights. Yet what 
one sees depends more on the seer than the seen. 
Thoreau got more than a European trip out of a little 
tramp from Boston to Mount Wachusett, only fifty miles 
away ; but he was one of the few that can get the satis- 
faction of a diamond out of a dewdrop. 
It seems strange to think that undulations of air go 
on and on in noiseless flight, becoming sound only when 
they reach a living ear, much as lake-waves roll on in 
silence till they break upon the shore ; that rays of light 
are dark as night until they strike a living eye. Tem- 
pests sweep over the mountain-sides and break down 
trees, but there is no voar in the forest-tops, except 
there be an ear to hear it; otherwise the silence of the 
grave prevails throughout the turmoil. Solar rays, 
though they pierce to the remotest star, after the lapse 
of many thousand years, can never become 47zgh¢ unless 
they strike an optic nerve. The interplanetary spaces 
are not luminous, unless there be a spectator of the scene. 
38 
