

Trees in Winter. 



By P. Q. Keegan, LL.D. 



The external aspect of our forested and scattered trees in winter is 

 very familiar, but the mysteries of their interior being at that season 

 are wrapped in obscurity, and demand for their elucidation all the 

 analytical acumen and manipulative skill that can be bestowed upon 

 the * subject. Up till within the last few years neither out-door 

 naturalists nor arm-chair faddists cared very much about the secret 

 arcanum, the slumbrous hibernating activities, or rather passivities, of 

 the denizens of the forest while enduring the sharp rigours of the 

 deepest winter. They seemed only to sleep, a few appeared to be 

 absolutely dead, their sprouting germinative activity was no more, and 

 save for the mystical entanglement of the leafless boughs and the 

 picturesque intricacy of the bud-studded twigs, there was no basis, 

 no attractive feature anywhere apparent to call forth physiological or 

 artistic interest. If the life of the forest w r as to be studied and 

 adequately comprehended, it must be done, as was thought, when buds 

 had burst and leaves had shot forth and flowers had blown into full 

 expansion, when life was everywhere quivering and tingling in the 

 running sap and swollen root and stirring leaf. Such was the im- 

 pression ; but it was narrow and one-sided, it ignored the best half of 

 the affair, it disdained the law that organised matter adapts itself to 

 circumstances, to the wintry chill as well as to the sultry glare, that 

 it operates by counterparts, so to speak, neither of which is complete, 

 but each a supplementary constituent of the grand totality. 



The justification for the foregoing remarks will, I think, be found 

 by any one who cares to make himself conversant with the history of 

 scientific research anent the winter life of our trees. Previous to the 

 year 1870a few plant analysts and botanical chemists had investigated 

 various parts and organs such as barks, buds, etc, gathered during the 

 winter season ; but at all events, in 1871 Eichard observed that in the 

 month of February there was a deficiency of starch in certain twigs of 

 willow, linden, and birch, which cases, however, he considered to be 

 mere exceptions to the law broached by Mohl, founded by Hartig and 

 Sachs, and generally held true at the time, viz. that the reserve starch 



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