90 FAMILIAR TREES 
To the ancients the Lindens seem to have ap- 
pealed rather by their utility than by their beauty. 
It is doubtful whether Aristophanes, in the allu- 
sion to the tree in his “Birds,” is merely speaking 
of a rival poet as being light as Linden-wood, or 
is accusing him more specifically of wearing an 
effeminate article of dress, strengthened in those days 
by laths of Linden-wood in place of the whalebone of 
modern times. Pliny, too, alludes to the lightness 
of the wood, as well as to the use of the inner bark 
for paper, when it was known as liber (so becoming 
extended to books, and giving us the word “ library”), 
and also for tying garlands; whilst Virgil, in the 
words (“ Georgies,” Book i.) 
“ Ceditur et tilia ante jugo levis,” 
(«A light Linden-tree also is felled betimes for the 
yoke”) is referring to the use of its wood in the 
making of the plough. 
Botanists must ever look with reverence upon 
this tree; for whether or not a meadow encircled 
by a hedgerow of Lindens gave the family name 
to our own great botanist, Lindley, it is tolerably 
certain that one of these trees growing near the 
home of his ancestors furnished a cognomen to a 
far greater than Lindley—the immortal Carl von 
Linné, better known as Linneus. 
Apart from any associations, however, the Lindens 
are sufficiently beautiful and sufficiently useful to 
command attention. They are’ straight-stemmed 
trees, with smooth bark, either round-topped or, 
when more perfectly developed, draped in equal 
