56 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



protoplasm and green chlorophyll from each cell of the 

 leaf moved slowly out with strange groping serpentine 

 motions, like little shapeless jellybag animals, at the first 

 approach of autumn frosts, and stored themselves up 

 securely in the permanent tissues of the stem till the 

 present time. How they have acquired the cunning to 

 do so, under the influence of natural selection, is one of 

 the greatest problems yet remaining unsolved in all the 

 history of life ; indeed, the more one looks at the ap- 

 parently spontaneous and voluntary movements of this 

 formless primary protoplasm, the more exactly do all its 

 properties, even in a plant, seem to resemble those of 

 conscious and intelligent beings. It is not merely that 

 protoplasm feels its way and moves responsively to 

 changes around it, but it also acts with every appear- 

 ance of deliberate volition. All winter long these living 

 principles of the dead leaves remain stored up within the 

 trunk or branches ; and now, when the sun returns to us 

 again, they are pushed up anew into the bursting buds, 

 and go to form the young leaves of the new year. The 

 vital protoplasm divides itself once more into cell after 

 cell in the fresh foliage ; each little globule surrounds 

 itself with a solid wall secreted from its own substance ; 

 and the whole mass burgeons forth apace into a new set 

 of leaves. 



Thus in one sense we might almost say that this 

 year's leaves are last year's over again. Whatever was 

 really vital in them remains ; what was cast away was 

 but the bare shell that surrounded the true living ma- 

 terial. Trees, in fact, are plant communities which have 

 learnt thus to keep up a common life apart from the life 

 of the separate individuals which make them up. Their 



