Conifers 
themselves. The older, lower branches continue at first 
to form a few green leaves at their tips ; but there comes 
a time when such leaves get no light. In that case they 
die and drop off early in the season. Such a branch, 
having no water-transpiring leaves at its end, begins to 
die at first gradually, but it soon dries up altogether and 
becomes absolutely dead and useless; generally it is 
powdered all over by the green dust of the Alga Pleuro- 
coccus. Whilst on the tree such dead branches are not 
usually attacked by fungi at all. 
If, on the other hand, a branch with living leaves is 
cut or lopped off, the fungi attack it promptly and may 
make their way down it and infest the trunk itself. 
But as the tree grows and its trunk expands, the dead 
branches drop off and fall into the mass of dead needles 
and leaf mould, There they are soon investigated by 
burrowing beetles and miscellaneous insects. The 
threads of the rich fungus flora in old woods find them 
out, and they are broken up and absorbed by Hydnums, 
Russulas, Agarics, bacteria, and the like. 
They are soon turned into humus and may again 
become food for their parent trees, 
One of the most alarming trade-prospects in the world 
to-day is the rapid exhaustion of conifer forests. Year 
by year shows an increasing area of farmland and arable 
cultivation. The forest is rapidly disappearing every- 
where, being used up to form pulp for the world’s 
newspapers, for railway sleepers, and the numberless 
trades which depend upon deal and other wood products, 
We in Britain are infinitely worse off even than most 
continental countries, for the amount of English soil 
under trees is only 5.3 per cent., of Scotch 4.6 per cent. 
(Wales 3.9, Ireland 1.5) of the total area. 
The forests of Germany cover 25.9 per cent. of the 
country (Austria 32.6, Belgium 17.3 per cent.) 
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