THE ALDER 



All persons, however ignorant of trees in general, are 

 familiar with the common Alder. It abounds everywhere 

 in wet places, skirting the banks of small, rivers, border- 

 ing the sides of old turnpike roads, where they pass over 

 wet grounds, filling up the basins of muddy canals, and 

 covering with its monotonous green foliage many an un- 

 sightly tract of land, hiding and then revealing the glitter- 

 ing surface of sluggish stream and lonely mere. The Alder 

 is a homely shrub, employed by Nature merely for the 

 groundwork of her living pictures, for covering stagnant 

 fens with verdure in company with the water-ilag and the 

 bog-rush, and as a border growth to the fenny forest, grad- 

 uating its foliage by a pleasing slope down to the verdure 

 of the plain. The assemblages of Alder constitute the plain 

 embroidery of watercourses, and form the ground upon 

 which many a beautiful flowering shrub is represented 

 and rendered more interesting. 



The Alder among shrubs takes the place which the 

 grasses occupy among herbs ; having no beauty of its own, 

 but contributing to set off to advantage the beauty of other 

 plants that flourish in the same ground. Nature likewise 

 employs the roots of this tree as a subterranean network, 

 to strengthen the banks of streams and defend them from 

 the force of torrents. The Alder in New England is sel- 

 dom large enough to be called a tree; it rarely stands 

 alone, but almost invariably in clumps or larger assem- 

 blages, the different individuals of the collection forming 

 each a single stem, almost without branches, making an 



