THE 
CHEMISTRY OF THE LAKELAND TREES. 
P. Q. KEEGAN, LL.D., 
Patterdale, Penrith, Cumberland. 
‘I po love a good tree,’ ejaculates Allan Quatermain, and 
what true lover of nature will not heartily respond to the 
sentiment? Its life is intense, it lives and labours for itself 
and not for others. From a tiny seed it develops to the full in 
accordance with its specific exigencies, which re-echo again 
on the environmental influences, the soil, situation, season, 
atmosphere, etc., which sustain and modify for good or ill its 
vital energies. The sombre mysteries exhibited by wintry 
gloom and dormancy are veiled on the return of spring beneath 
broad curtains of a bright and lively green. The leaves, those 
delicate organisms that minister to its most indispensable of 
organic needs, are too tenderly framed for the bitter cold an 
capricious temperatures of our northern clime, so they fall and 
ie in autumn days. Our suns are not generous enough as 
respects light and heat to always keep agoing the chemico-vital 
processes within, so that here again it is necessary to pause for 
a wintry rest, so as to bring to a full perfection what in tropic 
climes is effected day by day as the year rolls round. Fixed and 
rooted, steadfast and invincible to all aspects without, its inner 
arcanum is the theatre of chemical processes of the most 
important and interesting description. ‘ When next you behold 
the green tree,’ says Liddon, ‘be sure that you are in the 
presence of a very sacrament of nature, your eye rests upon 
the outward and visible sign of an inward and wholly invisible 
force.’ Now, it is just this inward and wholly invisible force 
that we wish most especially to demonstrate ; and as we cannot 
exhibit a living picture of its actual physiological activities, we 
must rest content, forsooth, with the next best t ing, viz., 
a delineation of the most tangible and palpable manifestations 
of those activities, i.e., the chemical products thereof which on 
analysis we find to constitute the sum total of the arboreal 
organism. 
Although it may be true to a certain extent that the Lake 
district is practically treeless, nevertheless many and varied 
scenes are known to me of illustrious beauty and attractiveness 
that owe these qualities to rich fleckings and interminglings of 
June 188 be oe 
