140 THE ASSOCIATlOl^S OF FLOWERS 
taller and stouter, and scarcely look the same; but the 
old hawthorn bush is there ; its very shape seems un- 
altered ; not a bough seems longer than when he last saw 
it, and its massy top is still covered with a wreath of 
flowers, as in days of yore. 
There is no natural object which better than a tree 
serves as a mem^orial of the events of the past. It is 
among the most beautiful of the productions of earth, and 
is comparatively a durable miCmento. When we read of 
the “Oak of Weeping,” beneath whose wide-spreading 
boughs the pilgrim family of Jacob buried the nurse of 
their mother, we feel that no epitaph could have been 
more expressive, and no monument more suitable. The 
trees of Shakespeare and Milton, of Chaucer and Tasso, 
have been regarded with veneration and affection by many 
visitors, and will still stand in many future years to tell of 
those for whose sakes they have been honoured. 
There is not a country in Europe where the common 
hawthorn does not grow wild, and wEere its clusters of 
white flowers do not enliven the landscape. If, during 
the latter end of May, we enter a cottage of almost any 
English village, we find it intermingled with the lilac 
bough, forming a nosegay for the fireplace, and strewing 
over the wide brick hearth som.e of its mnum.erable blos- 
soms. 
In France the hawthorn is often called “ TEpine noble,” 
from the idea that it furnished the crown of thorns wiiich 
was placed around the brow^ of our Saviour before his 
crucifixion. In Greece its white flowers are made into a 
garland for the bride, and strew- ed over the marriage altar. 
The spine or thorn which abounds upon this and other 
plants, is often made to disappear by cultivation. Thus, 
the pear-tree is smooth in the garden, but is, in its wuld 
state, beset wdth thorns. This is not the case wuth the 
prickle, which, arising from the bark only, and being dis- 
tinct from the wood of the stem, is not affected by the 
circumstances of the plant. The prickle may be stripped 
off wuth the bark, as in the rose and bramble ; but the 
thorn, proceeding from the wood, cannot be torn off in 
this way. 
1 he pink - blossoming hawthorn (Crataegus rosea) is 
merely a variety of the common hawthorn. Another va- 
