8 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
ture there is a marvellous gradation, each 
stage of which represents a higher and higher 
state of progress towards completion—within the 
region of the vegetable kingdom—until is reached 
that which is the most wonderful and beautiful 
handiwork of the Creator, the absolute perfection 
of plant life—a Tree. 
How minute are the starting-points—if we may 
so term them—of vegetable life, is scarcely com- 
prehended by those who, through the engrossing 
claims of business or other occupation, may have 
had little time or opportunity for the study of 
Nature. What often appears to the naked eye on 
some dark object as the tiniest covering of dust, 
as some coloured film on a watery surface, or as 
the shghtest of stains on wood or stone, reveals 
to us, when magnified, a little world of vegetable 
life, made up of countless numbers of individual 
plants, each one of which is possessed of a 
marvellous and beautiful organism, fitting it to 
live a separate existence ; to develope, within its 
tiny sphere of growth, by the cohesion and co- 
operation of its atomic parts; and, finally, to 
provide for the perpetuation of its kind, ere its 
