A SPRAY 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 endlessly ; they divide and sub- 

 divide until the original trunk is lost in a maze of 

 limbs. Not so the pine and its congeners. Here 

 the main thing is the central 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 for- 

 ward. The pine has no power to develop new 

 buds, new shoots, like the deciduous trees; no 

 power of spontaneous variation to meet new exi- 

 gencies, new requirements. It is, as it were, cast 

 in a mould. Its buds, its branches occur in regu- 

 lar series and after a regular pattern. Interrupt 

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



