THE CHERRY 63 



Their woods afford another means of discrimin- 

 ating between the Brupa'cece and the Poma'cece. 

 The former have fine but visible pith-rays, and vessels 

 so much more numerous in the spring-wood as to 

 make a light-coloured pore- zone ; whilst in the latter 

 the pith-rays are not visible, and the vessels are evenly 

 distributed throughout the annual ring. 



Among the largest Cherry trees on record are those 

 at Dunston, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, several of which 

 are more than fifty feet high, while the two largest 

 are seven and five feet respectively in circumference 

 at a height of two feet from the ground. It is, perhaps, 

 only under the favourable circumstances of good soil 

 and the loving care of the cultivator that such ex- 

 ceptional dimensions can be attained ; and certainly 

 it is difficult to imagine anything more beautiful in its 

 way than a Kentish Cherry-orchard, whether white 

 with blossom, or blushing with glossy fruit or with 

 turning autumn leaves. Still, as Mr. Kuskin elo- 

 quently argues in his " Modem Painters " : — 



" The Lowlander . . . even in his richest parks and 

 avenues . . . cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the 

 resources of trees," he continues, " are not developed until they have 

 difficulty to contend with ; neither their tenderness of brotherly 

 love and harmony till they are forced to choose their ways of various 

 life where there is contracted room for them, talking to each other 

 with their restrained branches. The various action of trees rooting 

 themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines, hid- 

 ing from the search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the rays of 

 rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, 

 climbing hand in hand among the'difSoult slopes, opening in sudden 

 dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies at rest 

 among fragrant fields, gliding in grave procession over the heaven- 

 ward ridges : nothing of this can be conceived among the unvexed 

 and unvaried felicities of the Lowland forest ; while to all these direct 



