BUDS 131 



bud of the following year, still younger buds, and 

 when required these can be pushed forward rapidly. 

 Sometimes a late frost kills the newly-expanded leaves, 

 say, of a Beech. This happened in the year 1891. 

 A' hard frost on the night of Whit-Sunday killed 

 nearly all the young and tender leaves, and for weeks 

 after all the Beeches looked brown and withered, 

 But before midsummer the buds, which in the usual 

 course would have expanded in 1892, had already 

 pushed forth, and each of these showed at its base a 

 bud which had been hastened a year, and which at 

 length expanded in the spring of 1892 instead of 



1893- 



Drought, or the devastations of Insects may bring 

 about the same results. Sometimes mere luxuriance 

 of growth accelerates the development of the buds, 

 and what would in the regular course form winter- 

 buds expand and develop into shoots in July. Such 

 fresh summer shoots are common in Horse Chestnut. 

 Elder, and Sycamore for instance. 



We can produce these results at pleasure by re- 

 moving the leaves from young shoots in spring. 

 When the buds are thus made to expand a year in 

 advance, the leaves whose development had been 

 arrested, in order that they might be converted into 

 bud-scales, resume their growth, and expand into 

 fully formed foliage-leaves or transitional forms con- 

 necting these with bud-scales. It is as if the tree 

 perceived that leaves and not bud-scales would be 

 wanted immediately. New buds form in the axils of 

 the leaves thus hurried on, and it is these which open 

 in the following spring. 



K 2 



