82 THE BEECH. 



have not more of beginning in them than of ending. Presently these 

 little brown spikes begin to open at their sharp extremities. The cover- 

 ings roll away, and in due time fall to the ground, strewing the surface 

 till it looks like a threshing-floor. At the same time are disclosed the 

 young green leaves and the inner coverings, which are of a delicate pink 

 colour, dry, soft and shining, wavy and half- curled, and so thin that the 

 light goes through them. They hang about the opening leaves, and in 

 the contrast of their exquisite tint, produce one of the loveliest 

 spectacles of the vernal season. Botanists call these pretty and transitory 

 vestments of the buds the "perules." Every tree possesses analogous 

 ones, larger or smaller, according to the species, but in none are they 

 more delicately fashioned or tinted. The leaves themselves are doubled 

 up precisely after the manner of a lady's fan, whence it is that on a fine 

 warm day, in the beech (as happens in the sycamore and several other 

 trees), there seems an almost miraculous start into life. The mode in 

 which leaves are folded while in the bud, varies most wonderfully. Some- 

 times the leaf is rolled up like a scroll of paper. Sometimes it is doubly 

 rolled, or from each edge towards the central line, and not infrequently 

 this condition is reversed by the roll being directed backwards. There 

 are trees, and herbaceous plants also, in which the rolling is like that of 

 a coil of ribbon ; and here in the beech, as we have said, the folding is 

 like that of a fan. The rapidity with which leaves expand is of course 

 greatly influenced by their primitive condition, and thus it is more to 

 the arrangement of the parts than to any casual or external circumstance 

 that we are to look for the explanation -of their very various rate of 

 opening. So true is it, once over again, that when we desire to dis- 

 cover truth, we must go inside. The differences of the arrangement of 

 the leaves in the bud are often accompanied by considerable differences 

 in other particulars. The plum-tree, for instance, and the cherry-tree, 

 are not more distinct in their produce than in this curious particular of 

 the early leaf-folding, for while in the plum-tree the "vernation" is 

 " convolute," in the cherry-tree it is <( conduplicate." 



While young, the leaves of the beech are most beautifully ornamented 

 with lines of silky hairs, which at the same moment constitute a defence 

 for them. With the expansion of the blade, these lines of hairs are 

 discovered to coincide with the veins ; while along the edge of the leaf, 

 projecting from it like the eyelashes from the margin of the eyelid, are 

 similar hairs, which give it the most delicate fringe conceivable. No 

 other British forest-tree has its young leaves thus fringed, so that in 

 this one single particular we possess a certain guide. A young beech- 



