1 88 COLIN CLOUTS CALENDAR. 



driven by circumstances to take up their abode in such 

 spots have been forced to get rid of their own real 

 leaves, and to develop some other distinct organ into a 

 serviceable foliar substitute in their place. If they did 

 not do so, they died out entirely, and there was an end 

 of them : only those which happened to accommodate 

 themselves to their environment in this particular suc- 

 ceeded in finally surviving ; and amongst such survivors 

 are the asparagus bushes of the present day. 



How such changes began to take place we can 

 better understand if we look for a moment at the ana- 

 logous case of the butcher's broom which grows instead 

 of box in the little hedge here by the shrubbery. Butcher's 

 broom is another aberrant lily, and a very close ally of 

 the asparagus tribe ; but it shows us the same peculiari- 

 ties in a rather less marked and advanced degree. I 

 suppose everybody knows its stiff prickly leaves, with a 

 small white six-petalled flower apparently growing out 

 of the very centre of each leaf. In this case it is easier 

 to realise that the seeming leaves are really altered 

 branches first because we can actually see the flowers 

 still budding out of their midst ; and, secondly, because 

 if we look close we can observe a minute scale, which is 

 the rudiment of a true leaf, springing from their mid- 

 rib just below the point where the flowers are given off. 

 Careful examination, in fact, shows us that the branch 

 has become flattened and leaf-like, but that it still re- 

 tains all the essential characters of a branch : because it 

 bears flowers and true leaves, whereas, of course, no- 

 body ever saw one true leaf growing right out of the 

 back of another. It is worthy of notice, too, that, in 

 order to protect the flowers from injury, each seeming 



