2 FAMILIAR TREES 
endurance which can hardly be better described than 
in the following passage by Oliver Wendell Holmes: 
“There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, 
if well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language. 
Take the Oak, for instance, and we find it always standing as a type 
of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought of the 
single mark of supremacy which distinguishes this tree from all our 
other forest trees? All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting 
gravity; the Oak alone defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction 
for its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell, and then stretches 
them out fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be mighty enough 
to be worth resisting. You will find that, in passing from the 
extreme downward droop of the branches of the Weeping Willow to 
the extreme upward inclination of those of the Poplar, they sweep 
nearly half a circle. At ninety degrees the Oak stops short: to slant 
upward another degree would mark infirmity of purpose; to bend 
downwards, weakness of organisation.” 
The forester may condemn as “ stag-headed ” the 
aged tree whose boughs, in Shakespeare’s language, are 
“‘mossed with age, 
And high top bald with dry antiquity.” 
It may even be hollow, the mere shell of bark 
supporting a sadly-reduced tale of branches that 
struggle gallantly to put forth year by year leaves, 
dwindled in size, from their knotty twigs, and acorns 
whose very abundance argues an infirmity of general 
health. Still it will, perhaps, be found to be diligently 
striving to stem the advance of the inner canker 
of decrepitude by a slight formation of new wood 
beneath the bark; and we may thus witness the 
dying efforts of the aged monarch. The hollow shell 
may be now supported by the strong clasping arms 
of the Ivy, ever young; or the stem, bared of its bark, 
may lift its blackened, blasted arms in sad protest 
to the heavens whence fell the fatal lightning. 
