THE ASPEN 123 
its shade but very slightly injurious to any plants 
beneath it. The profusion of suckers springing from its 
roots, however, makes the Aspen an undesirable tree 
for lawns, meadows, or hedgerows. They yield an 
abundant supply of faggots, or poles, if the tree be 
treated as coppice-wood, and cut down either every 
seven or eight, or every fifteen or twenty years. The 
rapid growth and usefully-moderated shade of this 
species adapt it well to act. as a “nurse” in moist 
woodlands for the Oak or Beech; and it may be 
propagated either by cuttings or, more readily, by 
seed. 
It is, however, chiefly for the grace and beauty of 
the grey bark of its stem and its rustling leaves that 
the Aspen is now valued. This rustling of the leaves, 
which are scarcely ever still even in the stillest air, is 
the most striking feature of the tree, and the point 
of most allusions to it in literature. Mr. Ruskin, in 
whose “ Modern Painters” the Aspen is treated with 
such loving detail, when discussing Homer’s treat- 
ment of landscape, writes as follows on the scene 
between Ulysses and Nausicaa : 
“The spot to which she directs him is another ideal piece of 
landscape, composed of a ‘beautiful grove of Aspen Poplars, a 
fountain, and a meadow,’ near the roadside; in fact, as nearly 
as possible such a scene as meets the eye of the traveller every 
instant on the much-despised lines of road through lowland France 
—for instance, on the railway between Arras and Amiens: scenes 
to my mind quite exquisite in the various grouping and grace of 
their innumerable Poplar avenues, casting sweet tremulous shadows 
over their level meadows and labyrinthine streams. We know 
that the princess means Aspen Poplars, because soon afterwards 
we find her fifty maid-servants at the palace, all spinning, and in 
perpetual motion, compared to the ‘leaves of the tall Poplar’; and 
