Note 75 — Chapter I

Perhaps in some instances, this may be the case with the trees of Nicholas Poussin; but even with him the boughs only touch the line of limit with their central points of extremity, and are not sectors of the great curve—forming a part of it with expanded extremities, as in nature. Draw a few straight lines, from the centre to the circumference of a circle. The forms included between them are the forms of the individual boughs of a fine tree, with all their ramifications (only the external curve is not a circle, but more frequently two parabolas—which, I believe, it is in the oak—or an ellipse.) But each bough of the old masters is club-shaped, and broadest, not at the outside of the tree, but a little way towards its centre.