OF GROWTH IN TREES. 97 



which extends through the whole period of the life of the 

 tree, and which carries along with it all the smaller fluctu- 

 ations of each clay and each year. We have shown that the 

 growth of the different parts of a tree depends on the 

 amount of leaf-surface put forth hy each part into the 

 atmosphere. But there is a continually increasing numher 

 of leaves developed during the first period of the life of a 

 tree, and consequently an acceleration, of growth, not only 

 of each individual part, but of the entire tree itself in the 

 same ratio, until the tree puts forth its maximum amount 

 of foliage, when the wave of growth culminates. The 

 tree has now obtained its greatest elevation and its widest 

 spread. Thus, precisely the same accelerated and gradu- 

 ally retarded growth which is manifested by the un- 

 branched first year's shoot, pervades the entire fabric of 

 the tree. The law of each part of a tree is thus beautifully 

 and clearly expressed in the whole tree. 



It has been intimated that not only the entire tree, but 

 each branch and branchlet has its own independent and 

 characteristic wavelet. It is for this reason, whilst the 

 tree is growing, that it is perpetually changing its form, 

 year after year. The greatest individual freedom predo- 

 minates. Each shoot, each smaller and greater shoot 

 system, grows after its own fashion. Sometimes here, 

 sometimes there, one or two branches take the lead 

 awhile, to be overgrown and hidden from view in suc- 

 ceeding years by the more powerful development of the 

 lower and surrounding branches. Each year the tree 

 changes its form, yet such is the wonderful power of cen- 

 tralization and the subjection of all its parts to the law im- 

 pressed on the seed, that the tree always retains the same 

 peculiar landscape character. To nothing is more strik- 

 ingly applicable than to the tree-form, what Goethe, the 

 German poet said of Nature : " She creates eternally new 

 forms; what there is, was yet never; what was, comes not 

 again. All is new, and yet always the old."* These fluc- 



* " Sie schafft ewig neu Gestalten ; was da ist, war noch nie, was war, 

 kommt nicht wieder. Alles ist neu und doch immer das Alte." 



7 



