CHAPTER V 

 GREEN LEAVES AT WORK 



" Between the budding and the falling leaf, 

 Stretch happy skies, 

 With colors and sweet cries, 

 Of mating birds in uplands and in glades. 

 The world is rife." T. J3. Aldrich. 



WHEN spring, long waited for, has come indeed, 

 and young leaves are unfolding in May sunshine, 

 we find the ground beneath the branches strewed 

 with half-transparent green or brownish scales. In 

 city parks they litter the asphalt walks, and drift 

 along their edges into little heaps. 



They are bud-scales, whose day . of usefulness 

 is over. They have braved all the rigors of 

 storm and frost, while, folded safe within them, 

 lay the foliage of the coming summer, destined to 

 expand in tender colors under happy skies. 



But the bud-scales seldom have any beauty, 

 save the beauty of fitness. 



They and the sleeping life which they enfold 



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