THROUGH THE CHANGING YEAR 123 



almost say — shuts the door, and leaves them 

 to the scant mercy of the elements. How 

 curiously wrong was the old idea that the tree- 

 spirit, after the fall of the leaves, took refuge 

 in the parasitic mistletoe or ivy, or in the 

 neighbouring evergreen! The tree-spirit re- 

 mains comfortably in the tree all the time, 

 having rid itself of unnecessary food con- 

 sumers before food has become scarce, and 

 having already the young food consumers 

 ready for the time when the work they can 

 do for it will more than repay the cost of their 

 keep. Here is another point, not mentioned 

 in our first chapter, in which the trees resemble 

 human beings — they take care of number 

 one! 



The reader may have noticed that the leaves 

 cling longer to the dead than to the living 

 branches of trees. In my orchard, two boughs 

 of an apple-tree broke last summer under a 

 too heavy burden of fruit. It is mid- winter 

 now ; we have had both wind and frost. Snow 

 is over everything. Yet the leaves are still on 

 these dead branches, though there are none 

 left on any other branch of the tree. The 

 reason is that when a branch is severed from 



