36 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



is powerless to adapt itself to any other. Victor 

 Hugo, in his old age, compared himself to a tree 

 that had been many times cut down, but which 

 always sprouted again. But the pines do not sprout 

 again. The spontaneous development of a new bud 

 or a new shoot rarely or never occurs. The hem- 

 lock seems to be under the same law. I have cut 

 away all the branches, and rubbed away all the 

 buds, of a young sapling of this species, and found 

 the tree, a year and a half later, full of life, but 

 ■vfith no leaf or bud upon it. It could not break 

 the spell. One bud would have released it and set 

 its currents going again, but it was powerless to de- 

 velop it. Remove the bud, or the new growth 

 from the end of the central shaft of the branch 

 of a pine, and in a year or two the branch will 

 die back to the next joint ; remove the whorl of 

 branches here and it will die back to the next 

 whorl, and so on. 



When you cut the top of a pine or a spruce, 

 removing the central and leading shaft, the tree 

 does not develop and send forth a new one to take 

 the place of the old, but a branch from the next in 

 rank, that is, from the next whorl of limbs, is pro- 

 moted to take the lead. It is curious to witness 

 this limb rise up and get into position. One season 

 I cut off the tops of some young hemlocks that 

 were about ten feet high, that I had balled in the 

 winter and had moved into position for a hedge. 

 The next series of branches consisted of three that 

 shot out nearly horizontally. As time passed, one 



