Chapter I 

 THE STUDY OF TREES IN WINTER 



OUTSIDE my window the trees in a 

 Httle wood stand leafless. Everything 

 which made this wood a deHght in 

 June, the contrast of Hght and shade among 

 the leaves, the varying tones of green in broken 

 sunlight, the warmth and color and summer 

 freshness, has gone, but the trees themselves, 

 in all their wealth of foliage were never so 

 beautiful as now. The massive moulding of 

 their trunks, the graceful curves of their 

 branches, the fine tracery of their little bare 

 twigs, now clear against the sky and again lost 

 in a tangled network of intersecting branches, 

 — the whole beauty of their symmetry, their 

 poise, strength, and delicacy is revealed as it 

 is never revealed in summer. 



Attracted first by the obvious grace of the 

 forms of trees as we see them from our windows 

 in winter, we discover that a closer study of the 

 details of bare twigs and buds in the woods 

 discloses unsuspected beauty in texture, form, 



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