OF GROWTH IN TEEES. 97 



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 character- 

 istic 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 predominates. 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 succeed- 

 ing 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 centralization and the sub- 

 jection of all its parts to the law impressed on the seed, that the 

 tree always retains the same peculiar landscape character. To 

 nothing is more strikingly 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 fluctuations in the landscape figure or outline of a grow- 

 ing tree, resemble the living play of a fountain which is inex- 

 haustible in new forms, and yet remains so similar to itself, that 

 the spectator in the distance might almost believe himself to 

 perceive a solid form hewn out of marble. 



This constancy of the form or peculiar characteristic land- 

 scape expression of the tree, through all its fluctuations, in the 

 earlier stages of its growth, shows the predominating influence 

 of the grand life wave, which carries forward all the minor 

 fluctuations of the branches, and affords the highest proof not 

 only of the individuality of the tree, but of the organic unity 

 of all its parts. 



There is then in the development of the entire tree, one 

 grand, all-pervading wave of growth, or an acceleration of the 

 yearly growths made by all its parts up to a determined stage 

 of culmination, and from thence, to the end of its life, a pro- 



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

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



13 



