" [6]
On the whole no doubt, woodlands are less beautiful in the winter: yet
even then the delicate tracery of the branches, which cannot be so well
seen when they are clothed with leaves, has a special beauty of its own;
while every now and then hoar frost or snow settles like silver on every
branch and twig, lighting up the forest as if by enchantment in
preparation for some fairy festival.
I feel with Jefferies that "by day or by night, summer or winter, beneath
trees the heart feels nearer to that depth of life which the far sky
means. The rest of spirit found only in beauty, ideal and pure, comes
there because the distance seems within touch of thought."
The general effect of forests in tropical regions must be very different
from that of those in our latitudes. Kingsley describes it as one of
helplessness, confusion, awe, all but terror. The trunks are very lofty
and straight, and rising to a great height without a branch, so that the
wood seems at first comparatively open. In Brazilian forests, for
instance, the trees struggle upward, and the foliage forms an unbroken
canopy, perhaps a hundred feet overhead.
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