LEAF-BEGINNINGS AND LEAF-FORMS 



257 



FIG. 314. WILD CHERRY (Primus avium). 



The flowers are produced before the leaves are fully expanded. At this stage they will be seen to have the 

 two halves of the leif-blade folded with their upper surfaces in contact. 



pillar letter-box, and beside a narrow stream which separates the parson's 

 few acres from the neighbouring farm, and so on to the schoolmaster's 

 cottage, gathering our leaves by the way. Lane, stream, meadow, corn- 

 field, cottage garden these will supply all, and more than all, the forms 

 required, and future rambles will help to fix in the memory the facts 

 elicited. 



Behold, then, the lane ! winding, odorous, leafy ; a spot for poesy, 

 such as might rouse the happy muse in a Clare or Cowper, or move to 

 loving activity the pencil of a Birket Foster. It is a bright June day, 

 and the song of birds, the hum of innumerable flying insects, and the 

 click of the grasshopper make music the whole way^ong. Noble Horse- 

 chestnut-trees (sEsculus hippocadanum) rise out of the lane-side hedges 

 at every few paces, and their branches meet over us, their spreading 

 digitate leaves affording welcome shade (fig. 303). An ivy-clad Oak (Quercus 

 robur) is also passed, easily to be recognized by its knotty, widespread 

 branches and wealth of sinuate leaves (fig. 317). Shakespeare, whose 

 quick eye let nothing escape him, called this tree " the unwedgeable and 

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