Page:Percival Lowell - an afterglow.djvu/86

Percival Lowell

I strolled down Piccadilly this afternoon by the side of Green Park in a clear autumnal-feeling air and thought of trees and walks on the other side of the Atlantic. It is a poverty-stricken flora one sees here especially in town;—plane-tree, plane-tree and again plane-tree, until one wishes all were not so plane. I have become possessed of a most excellent English book on trees, native and imported, quite the best, everything considered, and shall I say quite as good as our best; for I can't say more in any sense! And I speak by the book when I say the flora, the tree-flora is poor. There is, for instance, but one native maple, which is unlike any we have, and hardly more than a shrub. I have lately seen it on the Continent, too. Then, they have only one oak, a species of white oak. Indeed I saw only specimens of this great class abroad. No red oak species at all. What we call the English elm is no more English than American, being an imported tree in both countries. And so the tale of depletion goes on. Of yews, however, they may boast, several kinds being patently in evidence. Their beech cannot stand beside ours without being ashamed of both its skin and its diminutive leaves. It hasn't a good complexion, and as its cuticle is its chief attraction, the result is failure.

Tomorrow I start on a motor trip and my invaluable book bears me faithful company, although I have noticed one tree I can't find in it at all. 64