THE WALNUT. 417 



age of a twig. Examples have already been given and depicted of 

 the formation ot both leaf and bud scars upon dwarf twigs : they are 

 very conspicuous in the forked terminal shoots of the Sycamore, and 

 on the dwarfed shoots of Apple, Blackthorn, Cherry, and Pear. Walnut 

 twigs are also marked by small raised patches of a paler colour — 

 these are the " lenticels," which answer much the same purpose as the 

 pores of the human skin. They are also very noticeable in the Horse 

 Chestnut and Mountain Ash amongst other trees, but hardly discernible 

 in the Firs and the Larch. 



Our power of recognising a bare tree from a distance does not 

 only depend upon the construction of its branches, their number, 

 direction, definition, and comparative size with respect to the trunk, 

 but also on such smaller matters as the thickness of the twigs and 

 their closeness. The importance of this is brought home to an observer 

 when trees are seen in the uncertain light of the moon or at day- 

 break. At such times the outline of a Birch or Beech is blurred 

 by the number of the twigs ; they form a haze indistinguishable 

 from the sky, while the stout shoots of a Walnut, Ash, or Horse 

 Chestnut stand clearly silhouetted against it. 



THE BRANCHES. 



The olive-green and bronze of the young twig changes to a 

 pewter-grey on the branches, v/hich are rather smooth. The boughs 

 are covered with a rougher grey bark : the bark on the trunk is 

 scored by vertical lines, and by less deeply marked horizontal cuts, 

 varied by incisions enclosing diamond-shaped patches of bark. The 

 large number of abrupt curves in the branches and twigs — less sharp 

 than in an Oak, more abrupt than in a Plane — makes the tree easy 

 to recognise. These may be attributed partly to arrested growth at 



