Good Families 243 
show of spring or autumn moods. What 
winter trees are hickory and beech; what have 
they to do with mild climates and balmy 
air! They are children of cold, waving their 
bony arms in the winter gales in exultation, 
while the shriek of the wind in their bare 
branches is like the cry of the Valkyrie. The 
range of the white birch extends far into the 
bleak North and it grows in the poorest, 
rockiest soil, maintaining itself where others 
would perish. Yet it gives little evidence of 
this hardihood and is more feminine and win- 
some than any other tree. It is nurtured in 
cold and sterility, as some gentle characters 
are evolved amid harsh surroundings. 
In the arid regions of the South-West the 
Pea family is dominant among trees and this 
very fact of the supremacy of certain families 
in different regions is itself of peculiar inter- 
est. A slight analogy is presented between 
the history of plant and of human races. It 
would seem that the Conifers and the Cacti 
are as well adapted, and as essentially in- 
digenous, to their respective areas as were the 
Goths to Northern Europe and the Bedouin 
to the desert. We might ask where did the 
Composites originate and when did they, 
like Rome, overrun the world? What birch 
