THE ALDER. 



217 



requisite quantity of moisture, it becomes stunted in its 

 growth, and is usually seen as a low scrubby-looking 

 tree, seldom rising above twenty or thirty feet in height, 

 and frequently not beyond the dimensions of a large bush. 

 It possesses a very wide geographical distribution, being 

 found throughout the whole of Europe in localities suited 

 to its nature, as well as in the north, the east, and west 

 of Asia, in northern Africa, and a species said to be iden- 

 tical with it inhabits Canada and other parts of the north- 

 west coast of America. 



Associated with scenery of a certain description, such 

 as the banks of a stream, whether it be of the slowly- 

 gliding kind, as that of the sluggish Mole, which in Gilpin's 

 estimation derives its principal interest and effect from the 

 presence of this tree, or of the rocky-bottomed and swift- 

 running rivers of the northern parts of the kingdom, the 

 Alder is always an expected, and at the same time a 

 pleasing picturesque adjunct. In cases of the former de- 

 scription it ornaments and gives value to scenes, which 

 otherwise would be tame, nay, unsightly ; and in the latter, 

 from the appropriateness of its presence in the vicinity 

 of the limpid fluid, it gives even an additional value to that 

 varied and romantic scenery which their wild and often 

 precipitous banks present. 



It is not however from association alone, or the effect 

 produced by combination with other objects, that we look 

 upon the Alder with a favourable eye ; individually and 

 independent of extraneous circumstances we consider it 

 to be a tree of no mean merit in an ornamental point of 

 view, at least in those instances where it has been allowed 

 to attain its largest dimensions, and been favoured by soil 

 and situation. Its form, in such cases, is often imposing 

 as well as picturesque, assuming, as Sir T. D. Lauder 



