LEAVES IN WINTER QUARTERS. 1 63 



unless one is particularly observing. Above or 

 below the larger catkins on the same stalk, may 

 often be seen little purple mulberry-shaped bodies, 

 in clusters of threes and fours, keeping company 

 and growing with them. These contain the 

 immature female or pistillate blossoms, which in 

 the early spring will develop as soon as the male 

 flowers in the long, drooping spikes are ready to 

 discharge the abundant pollen grains, which, as 

 they escape, look like wreaths of yellow smoke 

 carried by the winds through the naked branches. 

 The small fruiting catkins are now covered with 

 little purple, wormlike stigmas, protruding from 

 the scales, which are thickly beset with hairs or 

 tentacles of delicate moist tissue. When the 

 pollen-dust is blown past some of these minute fin- 

 gers are sure to catch and hold on to a few of the 

 grains, which after a while push down tiny rootlets 

 or tubes in the soft flesh of the pistil, as seeds do 

 in the earth, till the little bottle-shaped bodies, 

 called the ovules, are reached, when a miracle is 

 performed which changes them to regular alder- 

 seeds, that in the Winter are found in those dark- 

 brown, woody cones of the previous season. 



The pussy willows, too, love to grow in wet 

 meadows and beside streams, with the alders, and, 

 like them, have cheery hearts. Often in sheltered 

 places the catkin buds, like tiny, tailless mice 

 clothed with glossy hairs that gleam in the sun- 



