FEBRUARY 29 



But now, ten years later, so great is their power of 

 tecovery, that there are the same Junipers, and, except 

 in the case of those actually broken off, looking as well 

 as ever. For those with many stems that were laid 

 down flat have risen at the tips, and each tip looks 

 Uke a vigorous young ten-year-old tree. What was 

 formerly a massive, bushy-shaped Juniper, some twelve 

 feet to fifteen feet high, now covers a space thirty feet 

 across, and looks like a thick group of closely-planted, 

 healthy young ones. The half broken-down trees have 

 also risen at the tips, and are full of renewed vigour. 

 Indeed, this breaking down and splitting open seems 

 to give them a new energy, for individual trees that I 

 have known well, and observed to look old and over- 

 worn, and to all appearance on the downward road of 

 life, after being broken and laid down by snow, have 

 some years later, shot up again with every evidence 

 of vigorous young life. It would be more easily 

 accounted for if the branch rooted where it touched 

 the ground, as so many trees and bushes will do : but 

 as far as I have been able to observe, the Juniper does 

 not " layer " itself. I have often thought I had found 

 a fine young one fit for transplanting, but on clearing 

 away the moss and fern at the supposed root have 

 found that it was only the tip of a laid-down branch 

 of a tree perhaps twelve feet away. In the case of 

 one of our trees, among a group of laid-down and 

 grown-up branches, one old central trunk has sur- 

 vived. It is now so thick and strong, and has so 



