68 THOREA U. 



The cows continue to browse them thus for twenty 

 years or more, keeping them down and compelling 

 them to spread, until at last they are so broad that 

 they become their own fence, when some interior 

 shoot, which their foes cannot reach, darts upward 

 with joy : for it has not forgotten its high calling, 

 and bears its own peculiar fruit in triumph. 



Such are the tactics by which it finally defeats its 

 bovine foes. Now, if you have watched the progress 

 of a particular shrub, you will see that it is no longer 

 a simple pyramid or cone, but out of its apex there 

 rises a sprig or two, growing more lustily perchance 

 than an orchard-tree, since the plant now devotes the 

 whole of its repressed energy to these upright parts. 

 In a short time these become a small tree, an inverted 

 pyramid resting on the apex of the other, so that the 

 whole has now the form of a vast hour-glass. The 

 spreading bottom, having served its purpose, finally 

 disappears, and the generous tree permits the now 

 harmless cows to come in and stand in its shade, and 

 rub against and redden its trunk, which has grown in 

 spite of them, and even to taste a part of its fruit, 

 and so disperse the seed. 



Thus the cows create their own shade and food ; 

 and the tree, its hour-glass being inverted, lives a 

 second life, as it were. 



It is an important question with some nowadays, 

 whether you should trim young apple-trees as high as 

 your nose or as high as your eyes. The ox trims them 

 up as high as he can reach, and that is about the 

 right height, I think. 



In spite of wandering kine and other adverse cir. 

 cumstances, that despised shrub, valued only by small 

 birds as a covert and shelter from hawks, has its blos 



