38 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



leading central shoot. For a couple of years the 

 vigorous young tree was led upward by two rival 

 branches; they appeared almost evenly matched; 

 but on the third year one of them clearly took the 

 lead, and at the end of the season was a foot or 

 more in advance of the other. The next year the 

 distance between them became still greater, and the 

 defeated leader appeared to give up the contest, so 

 that a season or two afterward it began to lose its 

 upright attitude and to fall more and more toward 

 a horizontal position; it was willing to go back into 

 the ranks of the lateral branches. Its humiliation 

 was so great that it even for a time dropped below 

 them; but toward midsummer it lifted up its head 

 a little, and was soon fairly in the position of a side 

 branch, simulating defeat and willing subordination 

 as completely as if it had been a conscious, sentient 

 being. 



The evergreens can keep a secret the year round, 

 some one has said. How well they keep the secret 

 of the shedding of their leaves ! so well that in the 

 case of the spruces we hardly know when it does 

 occur. In fact, the spruces do not properly shed 

 their leaves at all, but simply outgrow them, after 

 carrying them an indefinite time. Some of the spe- 

 cies carry their leaves five or six years. The hem- 

 lock drops its leaves very irregularly: the winds 

 and the storms whip them off; in winter the snow 

 beneath them is often covered with them. 



But the pine sheds its leaves periodically, though 

 always as it were stealthily and under cover of the 



