Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/450

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When oaks are quite stripped of their leaves by chaffers, they are clothed again soon after Midsummer with a beautiful foliage: but beeches, horse-chestnuts and maples, once defaced by those insects, never recover their beauty again for the whole season.—.

Many ash trees bear loads of keys every year, others never seem to bear any at all. The prolific ones are naked of leaves and unsightly; those that are sterile abound in foliage, and carry their verdure a long while, and are pleasing objects.—.

Beeches love to grow in crowded situations, and will insinuate themselves through the thickest covert, so as to surmount it all: are therefore proper to mend thin places in tall hedges.—.

May 12th.—The sycamore or great maple is in bloom, and at this season makes a beautiful appearance, and affords much pabulum for bees, smelling strongly like honey. The foliage of this tree is very fine, and very ornamental to outlets. All the maples have saccharine juices.—.

The stalks and ribs of the leaves of the Lombardy poplar are embossed with large tumours of an oblong shape, which by incurious observers have been taken for the fruit of the tree. These galls are full of small insects, some of which are winged, and some not. The parent insect is of the genus of cynips. Some poplars in the garden are quite loaded with these excrescences.—.