THE GREEN LEAF. 55 



the world on his own account. Yet the leaf differs from 

 the coral polype in one important particular : its life is 

 carried on in subordination to the life of the whole tree 

 of which it forms a part. Sap and protoplasm are sup- 

 plied to it from the older organs behind. It is like some 

 member of a civilised community whose own separate 

 functions are intimately bound up with those of all the 

 others, on whom he depends variously for food and 

 clothing ; whereas the polype is like a mere hunting 

 savage, self-supporting and comparatively isolated, 

 though forming part of a rudely aggregated whole. 

 And just as one individual in the community may die 

 without endangering the existence of the community in 

 its corporate capacity, so the separate leaves may fall 

 away and die without endangering \ lessening the life 

 of a tree on which they grew. In this way they differ 

 materially from the organs of a single organism, no one 

 of which can be cut .away without seriously damaging 

 the entire body of which it is a portion. 



Metaphysical as this conception sounds at first hear- 

 ing, it would still be hard to realise in any other fashion 

 the actual life of trees. The green leaves which they are 

 now putting forth so abundantly are each new members 

 of the foliar commonwealth. They spring from buds, 

 prepared for the purpose before last winter set in ; and 

 they are nurtured by the material drawn from the dead 

 leaves of last year's crop ; for that is how the corporate 

 existence is kept up from season to season. What fell 

 last autumn was not the living part of the leaves ; it 

 was merely the dead skeleton of the foliage the mass 

 of empty cells and stringy fibre, from which all truly 

 vital matter had been carefully withdrawn. The active 



