OF PINE. 



How different the expression of the pine, in fact 

 of all the coniferae, from that of the deciduous trees. 

 Not different merely by reason of color and foliage, 

 but by reason of form. The deciduous trees have 

 greater diversity of shapes ; they tend to branch end- 

 lessly ; they divide and subdivide until the original 

 trunk is lost in a maze of limbs. Not so the pine 

 and its congeners. Here the main thing is the cen- 

 tral shaft ; there is one dominant shoot which leads 

 all the rest and which points the tree upward ; the 

 original type is never departed from ; the branches 

 shoot out at nearly right angles to the trunk and 

 occur in regular whorls ; the main stem is never 

 divided unless some accident nips the leading shoot, 

 when two secondary branches will often rise up and 

 lead the tree forward. The pine has no power to 

 develop new buds, new shoots, like the deciduous 

 trees ; no power of spontaneous variation to meet 

 new exigencies, new requirements. It is, as it were, 

 cast in a mould. Its buds, its branches occur in reg- 

 ular series and after a regular pattern. Interrupt 

 this series, try to vary this pattern, and the tree is 

 powerless to adapt itself to any other. Victor Hugo, 

 in his old age, compared himself to a tree that had 



