NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Branch 
rami fica- 
Lions. 
The pathetic 
fallacy. 
harsh trunks are often broken with boles, and 
their limbs may take angle lines or prong out 
like the horns of a deer. Very different from 
such an angular growth as the oak is the stately 
elm, its long limbs branching and falling so 
gracefully, the weeping willow that throws its 
branches up and over like the spray from a 
fountain, the round, ball-shaped horse-chest- 
nut, or the long-armed, white-breasted birch of 
the mountains. 
The locust, the sycamore, the tulip, the lin- 
den, the nut-trees and the fruit-trees are just 
as individual and peculiar in their forms. The 
most commonplace hill-side will show innumer- 
able classes, families, and groups of trees ; and 
to the romanticist many of these growths con- 
vey significant meanings by their forms or move- 
ments. It is doubtless an application of the 
pathetic fallacy to think of the willow as “‘ sad,” 
and yet the droop of its branches, the wave of 
its leaves, lead the poets to make such a state- 
ment. In the same associative way, the pine on 
the mountain-top is ‘‘ solemn ” or ‘‘lonely,” the 
yew and the cypress are ‘‘mourners o’er the 
dead,” the oak is the ‘‘ monarch of the rorest.” 
Their look and bearing suggest such descrip- 
tions ; and it is not strange that man should 
