Page:Life in the Open Air.djvu/385

members of the tree, strike forth and crinkle as they clutch sunlight. And yet there is no frivolous minuteness of detail in this masterly tree, leader of the trio, and its fellows; although every leaf and spray and twig seem to be there, alive and animate.. The Artist has here, as everywhere, produced his effect by the peremptory facts of form and color, without weakening precision by attempts to convey ambiguous semblances. Hence his tree is a round salient mass, but not a cactus-like excrescence, and a maze of leafage without being a blur or a mop. In signal contrast to this sturdy, erect outstander is the tree with depending branches and delicate silvery-green foliage, — a tree of more elegance of figure and a mimosa-like sensitiveness of leaves, but vigorous and not at all shrinking from the forward and critical position which it holds. The third tree, the Lepidus of this triumvirate, keeps somewhat in the shady background, and leans rather toward the thicket, being of less notable guise and garb. His stiff, scanty leafage and channelled bark are entirely characteristic of the region. Each of these trees is not only a type in its form and foliage, but also, though less conspicuously, of the garden of smaller growth which, feeding on air, dwells on its trunk. Clustering luxuriance of boweriness belongs to the sheltered recesses, and does not inundate these foremost types. But each is a hanging garden, an upright parterre raising up to sunshine its peculiar little world of warm-blooded mosses,