12 



SYLVAN SKETCHES. 



" One day, quoth he, I sate, as was my trade^ 

 Under the foot of Mole, that mountain here, 

 Keeping my sheep among the eooly shade 

 Of the green Alders on the MuUa's shore." 



The Heliades, fabled by the ancients to have been 

 transformed into poplars, have been said by some writers 

 to have been changed to Alders : others will have it to 

 be larches. Porcacchi, in his explanatory notes to the 

 Arcadia of Sannazaro, apparently unconscious of the con- 

 tradiction, ascribes this origin both to the Alder and the 

 poplar*. It is probable, says Dr. Hunter, that the 

 poets chose such aquatics as best suited their purpose-f*. 



* Venetian edition, 1583, pp. 24, 259. 



t See Poplar. 



