84 THE LAWS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY 



ments of monopoly, whether political, religious, or com- 

 mercial, must therefore be withstood. T he tree must be 

 injdalQ-spread_Qjit,.onj,lljides. In a world like this it is 

 necessary for people to look out; for the individual liberty 

 of those who occupy a subordinate and inferior position 

 " can only be maintained at the price of eternal vigilance.." 



We have shown that the tree is a compound plant, built 

 up by the labors of individual phytons or plants, called 

 leaves. One generation of these phytons perishes every 

 year, but not before each individual of the generation has 

 formed a bud, which remains when the leaf falls, through 

 the winter months ; the embryo, leaves and stem which it 

 contains, developing on the return of the next vegetative 

 season. If, therefore, the leaves are regarded as phytons 

 or individual plants, the series of buds which they produce 

 and from which comes forth, when circumstances are favor- 

 able, new families of leaves, may be correctly regarded as 

 a new generation ; and if we consider the first set of leaves 

 as the parent, or the entire shoot, built up by them, as the 

 mother-shoot, the first set of buds produced by them which 

 unfold to shoots and leaves, may be called the daughter- 

 shoots or the first generation, and the second set of buds 

 generated by the leaves of the daughter-shoots, the second 

 generation, &c. 



Now if all leaves produced buds the first year, and if all 

 buds, thus produced, unfolded to shoots and leaves the 

 second year, then the number of generations of shoots 

 would exactly correspond with the number of years during 

 which the tree had lived, and we should have an easy but 

 simple method of determining its age. But in reality it is 

 not so, because in the development of the main axis of a 

 branch, often single or numerous seasons occur, during 

 which the growth is greatly retarded, and only such leaves 

 are produced whose axilla remain unfruitful, whilst the 

 growth of the side-shoots is still more retarded, and they, 

 for the same reason, consequently remain unbranched. 

 Hence, the greatest difierence predominates between the 

 number of generations of shoots on a branch and its age. 

 Compare in this respect the growth of the first side-shoot 



