26 ANNUAL GROWTHS RECORDED 



CHAPTER II. 



THE HISTORY OP THE DEVELOPMENT OF TREES MAY BE ADVANTA- 

 GEOUSLY STUDIED, BY A CAREFUL EXAMINATION OF THE MARKS 

 LEFT BY NATURE ON THEIR YOUNG BRANCHES THE GROWTHS 

 MADE BY THE TREE DURING THE FORMER YEARS OF ITS LIFE, 

 HAVING BEEN THERE ACCURATELY RECORDED. 



EVERY part of a tree, whether it be a branch, shoot, or leaf, 

 represents exactly the organic condition of the tree during 

 the earlier periods of its life, and a certain stage of develop- 

 ment through which the entire tree itself has already passed. 

 For it is plain from the facts mentioned in Chapter L, that 

 the tree was, at the commencement of the first year of its 

 life, a single leaf, and at its close a green herbaceous shoot, 

 exactly like those annual growths which it now makes at 

 the sides and extremities of its branches. In the spring of 

 the second year, the buds formed by the leaves of the first 

 year at the sides and summit of the first year's growth or 

 shoot, developed into new growths or shoots, which were 

 constructed after precisely the same pattern. They pre- 

 sented in autumn, when defoliated, precisely the same exter- 

 nal appearances, having side and terminal buds and the same 

 peculiar form of leaf scar. We are, therefore, necessarily 

 led to regard them as only a repetition of the first year's 

 shoot. For, as the leaf is a unit, through repetition of which 

 the first year's shoot is formed, so also is the first year's 

 shoot itself a unit, but of a higher and more complex char- 

 acter, through repetition of which the branches, and ulti- 

 mately the entire tree itself is constructed. The whole is 

 therefore represented in each of its parts j and if we take the 



