A SPRAY OF PINE. 41 



leader. The third year it stood at an angle of about 

 forty-five degrees ; the fourth year it had gained 

 about half the remaining distance, when the clipping 

 shears again cut it down. In five years it would 

 probably have assumed an upright position. A white 

 pine of about the same height lost its central shaft by 

 a grub that developed from the egg of an insect, and 

 I cut it away. It rose from a whorl of four branches, 

 and it now devolved upon one of these to take the 

 lead. Two of them, on opposite sides, were more 

 vigorous than the other two, and the struggle now is 

 as to which of these two shall gain the mastery. Both 

 are rising up and turning toward the vacant chief- 

 tainship, and, unless something interferes, the tree 

 will probably become forked and led upward by two 

 equal branches. I shall probably humble the pride 

 of one of the rivals by nipping its central shoot. One 

 of my neighbors has cut off a yellow pine about six 

 inches in diameter, so as to leave only one circle of 

 limbs seven or eight feet from the ground. It is now 

 the third year of the tree's decapitation, and one of 

 this circle of horizontal limbs has risen up several 

 feet, like a sleeper rising from his couch, and seems 

 to be looking around inquiringly, as much as to say : 

 " Come, brothers, wake up ! Some 8ne must take the 

 lead here ; shall it be I ? " 



In one of my Norway spruces I have witnessed 

 the humbling or reducing to the ranks of a would-be 

 leading central shoot. For a couple of years the 

 vigorous young tree was led upward by two rival 



