26 AGRICULTURE. 



and so on, you find that the line goes around the branch in a 

 spiral direction. By closely observing all these different 

 branches, you find that in all cases there is a certain definite 

 order of arrangement. Further, you find that just as the leaves of 

 any one kind of tree are nearly alike in outline, so they are all 

 nearly alike as to their form of arrangement. Find out this 

 mode or form of arrangement of leaves on the different trees 

 and shrubs with which you are familiar. 



When the leaves have done their work they lose their bright 

 green color, turning duller, sometimes brown or almost white, 

 sometimes yellow, sometimes red and many-colored. In the 

 case of one class of trees, such as maples, oaks, etc., they fall 

 off the branches such trees are called deciduous, to distinguish 

 them from the evergreens. But even the evergreens become 

 duller in the fall, and the new growth of the spring is of quite 

 a different green from that of the old growth. 



THE BUDS. The leaves do not grow into branches or 

 flowers. The buds come every year (in the fall and in the 

 spring) in the angles or " axils " of the leaves or at the ends 

 of the branches, so that the arrangement of the leaves is also 

 the arrangement of the buds. Some buds grow into branches 

 and some into blossoms. When a bud grows at the end of 

 the branch it, of course, by its growth 'lengthens the branch; 

 when it comes on the side, by its growth it forms a side 

 branch. When we " stop " a raspberry bush by pinching off 

 the growth at the end, we cause the side buds and branches to 

 grow out, and thereby make the plant become bushy. 



If you remove a bud formed in the fall, covered with 

 a waxy substance to protect it in winter, or if you take a 

 bud formed in spring or summer, and carefully open it, you 

 find it is a compact mass of small leaves it is a little branch 

 compressed and packed away ; and the opening of the bud 

 is nothing else than an unfolding of these leaves as they 



