THE PIvANT WORLD 11 



growing shoots, however, seems to indicate that there is a difference from 

 the first. 



What appears to be a real exception is occasionally found on the very 

 end of some of the longest and most exposed branches, as if growth were 

 arrested for fear of the branch becoming top-heavy, or perhaps because 

 the nourishment provided at the end of such slender branches is not suf- 

 ficient to support rapid growth. Occasionally a tree shows arrested 

 growth in nearly all its branches. This may be due to the tree as a 

 whole receiving insufficient nourishment. 



On the contrary, there appear to be no exceptions to the rule that the 

 growth of the shaded inside branches is always arrested ; the only shoots 

 from old wood inside the tree found to be making rapid growth were a 

 few that drooped and thus immediately reached the light, or, in very rare 

 cases, where the old wood was exposed to the direct rays of the sun. 



Water-shoots, so common in many plants, which in some fruit trees 

 represent such a waste of energy that pains are taken to remove them, 

 are entirely absent in the ginkgo. Inside branches that appear to have 

 been water-shoots at one time can be seen, but in every case their grow- 

 ing points are now in a dormant condition, and it seems reasonable to 

 suppose that the elongation of these branches took place at a time when 

 they had access to the light. These dormant branches that take the place 

 of water-shoots waste little energy until a longer branch would be able to 

 elaborate useful material and thus be of service to the tree as a whole. 



This economical method of procedure seems much more rational than 

 that more commonly practiced by other plants where each shoot goes 

 ahead independently and, if in the shade, makes the more rapid growth 

 in its effort to reach the light, exhibiting as it were a lack of that spirit 

 of co-operation present in the primitive ginkgo. 



Even amid the January snows in certain warm swamps, in the beds of 

 shallow running brooks and around springs which do not freeze, the 

 sturdy skunk-cabbage is stoutly pushing its hardy sheaths up into the 

 world of frost. You who in the spring pass with disdain this homely 

 habitant of the swamp because of its fetid breath, wait until, tramping 

 through the snow of a winter landscape, you come suddenly upon the 

 brownish-green spear-heads of this dauntless forerunner of the spring 

 bravely thrust above the protecting earth. You never will forget it. It 

 seems as if in the instant of that first glimpse the winter had been dealt 

 its death-blow. There is proof that already are the forces of the spring 

 at work. You will linger long, and thereafter will admiration mature 

 into something akin to affection for this ill-smelling denizen of the 

 swamp. — Co7intry Life in America. 



