SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



15 



small pendulous catkins, several of such from each 

 spur. The fertile or pistillate flowers are enclosed 

 in a pod-like involucre, which eventually becomes 

 the woody and bristly enclosure of the nut or mast. 

 This involucre is borne on a shorter and stouter 

 stalk than the staminate catkins, and one such 

 involucre only is produced by each spur, and 

 is placed near its tip. The terminal bud of a spur 

 is always a leaf-bud, not a fiower-bud, and thus the 

 spur can go on lengthening indefinitely, although 

 slowly. It sometimes happens, however, that a 

 spur will forsake its character and, under the 

 influence of a moist season or some other cause, 

 will take the form of a slender leafy shoot, with 

 fully-developed internodes. 



growing quite near, and apparently of equal age, 

 retained the leafy long-jointed character of their 

 youth. 



A striking peculiarity of the beech is the way in 

 which its branches, more particularly the lower 

 and older ones, follow the same line of growth 

 from their origin onward to the end of the last 

 season's shoot. I have measured one of the 

 longest of such branches which I have seen in the 

 neighbourhood from which I write, and I found its 

 length to be more than fifty-five feet; and this is 

 no extreme case. The ramification of the beech 

 thus contrasts strongly with the abrupt changes of 

 direction which we see in the gnarled branches of 

 the oak and in some examples of the wych-elm. 



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Ramification of the Beech. 



One may constantly find branchlets which have 

 begun as spurs, and, as such, have grown barely 

 half-an-inch in the season, the leaf-scars being 

 placed as close as possible above each other, and 

 then shooting out with internodes of as much as 

 two inches in length. The tendency to form spurs 

 varies in different seasons, but it usually increases 

 with the age of the tree, and thus old trees show 

 fewer and fewer of the long lithe shoots which 

 characterised their early growth, and gradually 

 assume a stiff and short-jointed habit, eventually 

 becoming bare and stag headed in aspect. There 

 is, however, much difference in this respect 

 between individual trees. I have seen one tree 

 quite covered with fruiting spurs, whilst others 



This length of branch without change of direction 

 arises partly, perhaps, from the long-jointed habit 

 of growth, but more especially from the fact that 

 the bud at the end of each leading shoot is not as 

 in the elm and in the lime, an axillary bud, but is 

 the end of the axis itself, which in autumn closes 

 up into a winter bud possessing greater force of 

 development than the axillary buds below it. In 

 some cases the yearly shoot lengthens for an inch 

 or more beyond the last leaf before closing up into 

 a winter bud, but in other cases there is no space 

 between the last leaf and the terminal winter bud, 

 the leaf-scar being found close to the base of 

 the bud ; but in these instances we always find at 

 least a rudimentarv axillarv bud between the leaf- 



