Trees, Shrubs and Vines 
and is now, a stupendous botanical and zoological the- 
atre of development as well, which adds immensely to 
the dignity and significance of the long and mysterious 
career of our globe. 
One trait of the poplar family, seen in varying de- 
gree in all its species, is a slender, tapering form not 
quite like that of any other group. The Lombardy 
poplar carries it to the extreme, but we find it in cot- 
tonwood and aspen in a modified way. Far as the eye 
can see a balsam poplar this special feature is recog- 
nizable. The whole group is like a family of children 
having a common peculiarity of figure. The bark, too, 
is tell-tale, and the smooth, leathery leaf. How 
marvellous that somewhere in the tiny seed of each of 
these species is wrapped an indestructible potency that 
moulds the seedling, sapling, and the ever-growing tree 
into rigid conformity to the poplar idea, yet with such 
liberty of variation as makes not only the species to dif- 
fer, but every tree different from every other in the same 
species. In that microscopic embryo resides the forma- 
tive principle of the plant’s whole career, be it of se- 
quoia that lives a thousand years, or of the cypress vine 
that dies in six months, laying strong hand on every 
branch, guiding each twig, determining the unfolding 
of leaf, the fashion of flower and fruit, and appointing 
its stature; even its sentence of death is somewhere 
written in the tiny germ. We look with wonder and 
awe upon some of the mighty developments of plant 
life ; we may well bend in reverence before that tiny 
miracle of nature, a seed. 
Of all the poplars the most picturesque is certainly 
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