THE HAWTHORN. 



Crat.^gus Oxyacantha. 



Natural order — Rosacea. 

 Class — IcosAXDRiA. Order — Pentagynia. 



There is^ I think, no tree, the shnple mention 

 of which excites snch pleasurable emotions as the 

 Hawthorn. Never attaining a remarkable size, 

 neither stately in growth, nor graceful in form, 

 it yet possesses an interest to which many a 

 loftier and more elegant child of the forest can- 

 not aspire. We may see it applied to the most 

 homely and unromantic purposes, clipped by the 

 hedger's shears of every particle of natural spray, 

 and reduced, as it were by line and plummet, 

 to the uniform proportions of a mere verdant 

 wall ; yet the tree to which the mind reverts 

 when the Hawthorn is mentioned is independent 

 of any such associations. It does not, it is true, 

 carry us away to forests or woodland mountains, 

 to the mid fastnesses of Nature, where men and 

 the things of men have no place. Were we 

 acquainted with it only in such situations, it 

 would want half its interest — but it recurs to 

 the memory as the necessary appendage of the 

 village, to which, in our earlier years, it was our 

 highest privilege to make our holiday excursions 

 — the veteran record of our infantile sports, re- 

 maining unchanged w^hile the stern realities of 



