A SPRAY OF PINE 37 



of these branches, apparently the most vigorous, 

 began to lift itself up very slowly toward the place 

 occupied by the lost leader. The third year it 

 stood at an angle of about forty-five degrees; the 

 fourth year it had gained about half the remaining 

 distance, when the clipping shears again cut it 

 down. In five years it would probably have as- 

 sumed an upright position. A white pine of about 

 the same height lost its central shaft by a grub that 

 developed from the egg of an insect, and I cut it 

 away. It rose from a whorl of four branches, and 

 it now devolved upon one of these to take the lead. 

 Two of them, on opposite sides, were more vigorous 

 than the other two, and the struggle now is as to 

 which of these two shall gain the mastery. Both 

 are rising up and turning toward the vacant chief- 

 tainship, and, unless something interferes, the tree 

 will probably become forked and led upward by two 

 equal branches. I shall probably humble the pride 

 of one of the rivals by nipping its central shoot. 

 One of my neighbors has cut off a yellow pine about 

 six inches in diameter, so as to leave only one circle 

 of limbs seven or eight feet from the ground. It 

 is now the third year of the tree's decapitation, and 

 one of this circle of horizontal limbs has risen up 

 several feet, like a sleeper rising from his couch, 

 and seems to be looking around inquiringly, as 

 much as to say : " Come, brothers, wake up ! Some 

 one must take the lead here ; shall it be I ? " 



In one of my Norway spruces I have witnessed 

 the humbling or reducing to the ranks of a would-be 



