2 THE TREES Of AMERICA. 



clothed them with leaves and flowers, without forming them as now, so that no 

 two trees in all the world are alike, nor any two leaves in all this mighty mass 

 of verdure that we cannot distinguish from each other, nor any two flowers, upon 

 the same stalk even, which are not sufficiently unlike, to enable us to mark them 

 as individuals. 



Take for instance the branch of an oak, and examine every leaf in succession. 

 You will find each is unlike every other, and that in addition to this variety, by 

 the combination of lines and angles, the arrangement of the leaves on the stem 

 so that each presents a different aspect to the eye, the effect of light and shadow, 

 the shadows of some passing over the others, and ui the thousand Aariations of 

 tint and tone, which no language can describe, you have a mass of bewildering 

 beauty, every part of which is felt to be distinct from the rest, and yet so alike, 

 that you would not for one moment mistake the kind of tree to which it belongs. 



But if nature presents such a variety in the single bough before us, what shall 

 we say when we behold her in the majestic tree or solemn forest ? " The leaves 

 then," in the language of Ruskin, " at the extremities, become as fine as dust, a 

 mere confusion of joints and lines between you and the sky, a confusion which 

 you might as well draw sea sand, particle by particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf. 

 This, as it comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque ; 

 it is always transparent with crumbling lights in it, letting you through to the 

 sky ; then out of this come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, 

 all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extremities ; 

 then under these you get deep passages of broken, irregular gloom, passing into 

 transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows ; the twisted stems glancing through 

 them, in their pale and entangled infinity, and the shafted sunbeams, rained 

 from above, running along the lustrous leaves for an instant, then lost, then 

 caught again on some emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again, with a 

 faint reflex, on the white under sides of dim groups of drooping foliage, the 

 shadows of the upper boughs running in gray network down the glossy stems, and 

 resting in quiet checkers upon" the glittering earth ; but all penetrable and trans- 

 parent, and, in proportion, inextricable and incomprehensible, except where, 

 across the labyrinth and the mystery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow. 



