118 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



cheerful, and flickering faces along river banks, in fruitful 

 vales, and at the gates of wilder glens; although so open and 

 airy, as observed, the shade is, nevertheless, cool and com- 

 plete; the milk-white bark so scales off perpendicularly as 

 to become the purest, neatest, and most gladdening tree of all 

 the groves — a cool, snowy, sylvan alp in the midst of the 

 vales ! It is, however, only here and there one, or few, among 

 a host of darker trees of the forest, at our northern coast 

 limits, where the contrast makes it the most striking object 

 of the landscape — a perfect marvel of beauty set in such 

 sombre wintry scenery, like a bright angelic visitant, cheer- 

 ing the wilderness and the solitary places; recalling scenes 

 of early days, when the delicious and musky fragrance of 

 the Wild Isabella or Fox Grape ( V. Labrusca) swayed its long 

 vines pending the lofty boughs, free in mid air, fifty to one 

 hundred feet or more, like the great ropes from the mast- 

 head of a "Man of War." How it ever got there, was the 

 juvenile mystery of those days, when transient thought was 

 lightly turned on the how, the why, and the wherefore. 



This, or that, was there, for "happily unconcerned, in the 

 enjoyment of the present, and of the daily bread; or later 

 on, beneath these academic shades reposing, with sundry 

 favorite poets in converse the while, all the live long Sum- 

 mer nooning gloaming, between refreshing lunch and labor, 

 we passed the usual day's duty;" thus are these Plane trees 

 associated in our memories with ten thousand charms ; per- 

 haps, to some, 'twere wiser unnumbered (?); indeed, we sel- 

 dom dare touch, or but faintly and feebly, the harp-strings of 

 the heart con amove, save to the innocent and unperverted ear 

 of childhood. But could the Plane trees tell their own tale, 

 ancient or modern, what poems, what songs, and what pro- 

 found philosophies would we not have? Planted, as it was, 

 along all avenues, beside all walks on orient or classic ground, 

 near their gymnasia — all public schools in Athens — constitut- 

 ing the honored groves of Epicurus, where Aristotle taught 

 his peripatetic disciples, shady walks of all public buildings, 

 the groves of Academus, in which the vast sense of Plato 

 echoed from the great empyrean of his intellect as he deliv- 

 ered those celebrated discourses. Here, too, the sacred 

 Homer, outcast and wanderer, sang as no other poet ever 

 sung. The enchanted but vain Xerxes must needs tarry 

 beneath the fascinating shades of the sycamore of Lycia, 

 belt it with a ring of gold, adorn it with jewels, impress it 

 upon medals, and leave it in charge of one of the choice 

 ten thousand. Time would fail to recount a tithe of its lore, 

 even by name, for it has been greatly celebrated from the 

 earliest records of Grecian history, and long prior, in the 

 Orient, whence, not onl}' much literature, but the tree itself, 

 has been imported — nor do any of them yet known equal 

 our own. 



