198 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
either green or dried, are employed in France, Germany, and Sweden, as food for 
cattle, and this Bose thinks one of the most valuable purposes of the tree. The 
powdered bark, given in doses of half a pound, expels the bots and worms from the 
stomach of horses; and in Russia, Pallas informs us, the bark is used in domestic 
medicine. In the Highlands of Scotland, the bark is made into torches. 
The phrase, to “tremble like an aspen leaf,” has become a household word, and is 
as old as the poet Spenser, who says— 
“His hand did quake 
And tremble like a leaf of aspen green,” 
And Sir Walter Scott’s well-known lines remind us of this tree— 
O woman! in our hours of ease, 
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, 
And variable as the shade 
By the light quivering aspen made; 
When pain or sickness rends the brow, 
A ministering angel thou.” 
Section II—AIGEIROS. Duby. 
Catkins lax in fruit, their scales not ciliated. Stamens 8 to 30. 
Stigma with 4 short thick and often wedgeshaped segments. Young 
branches glabrous, often shining and glutinous. 
SPECIES IL—POPULUS NIGRA. Linn. 
Prate MCCCIL 
Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ. et Helv. Vol. XI. Tab. DCXIX. Fig. 1275. 
Branches spreading; young branches glabrous, not distinctly 
angular. Buds all glabrous or subglabrous, shining, viscous; flower- 
buds oblong acuminate with the point curving outwards; leaf-buds 
conical, acute. Leaves all deltoid or ovate-deltoid, acuminate or 
cuspidate, finely crenate-serrate, glabrous, ciliated when young, and 
often with a few scattered hairs on the veins, quite glabrous when old. 
Male catkins cylindrical. Female catkins fusiform, lax in fruit. 
Catkin-scales shortly laciniate. Capsules globular-ovoid. 
By the banks of rivers and in damp woods. Rather scarce, 
and probably not native, except in the south of England. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Tree. Spring. 
A large tree with yellowish-grey bark and spreading branches; 
the young ones yellowish, uneven, but not raised into sharp angles. 
Leaves 14 to 5 inches long, on long compressed petioles. Male catkins 
pendulous, 2 to 3 inches long: stamens 12 to20; anthers red. Female 
catkins shortly stalked, ascending and 1 to 1} inch long in flower, 
it a 
