8 WOOD AND GARDEN 



much more difficult to decide what is desirable in the 

 way of broad treatment of nearer objects. 



The ground has a warm carpet of pale rusty fern ; 

 tree-stem and branch and twig show tender colour- 

 harmonies of grey bark and silver-grey lichen, only 

 varied by the warm feathery masses of birch spray. 

 Now the splendid richness of the common holly is 

 more than ever impressive, with its solid masses of 

 full, deep colour, and its wholesome look of perfect 

 health and vigour. Sombrely cheerful, if one may 

 use such a mixture of terms ; sombre by reason of the 

 extreme depth of tone, and yet cheerful from the look 

 of glad life, and from the assurance of warm shelter 

 and protecting comfort to bird and beast and neigh- 

 bouring vegetation. The picture is made complete 

 by the slender shafts of the silver-barked birches, with 

 their half-weeping heads of delicate, warm-coloured 

 spray. Has any tree so graceful a way of throwing 

 up its stems as the birch ? They seem to leap and 

 spring into the air, often leaning and curving upward 

 from the very root, sometimes in forms that would 

 be almost grotesque were it not for the never-failing 

 rightness of free-swinging poise and perfect balance. 

 The tints of the stem give a precious lesson in colour. 

 The white of the bark is here silvery- white and there 

 milk-white, and sometimes shows the faintest tinge of 

 rosy flush. Where the bark has not yet peeled, the 

 stem is clouded and banded with delicate grey, and 

 with the silver-green of lichen. For about two feet 



