378 -Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
toward providing for the wants of the future. 
The leaves drank in the summer sunshine, the roots 
soaked up what summer rain the weather-gods 
vouchsafed them, and the food thus gathered was 
stored away in the root for future use. The bridal- 
wreath and pyrus japonica shrubs were equally fore- 
handed. In spring they were obliged to support 
a showy and expensive family of flowers, which 
needed for their maintenance all that the parent 
bushes could scrape together. When flowering 
time was over, however, the bushes began to 
gather a store of gums and starches, to be laid by 
till spring. All the trees and bushes have thus put 
by a store of nourishment. They will need it all 
next April, when the countless buds, studding the 
branches, begin to swell under our eyes, and they 
will need it still more in May, when young foliage 
begins to expand and when baby-blossoms are 
doing their growing. 
The buds which open, here and there, in the 
autumn sunshine, are using capital which they 
ought not to touch for five months to come. But 
they can get only a small portion of this capital, 
and hence they seldom expand very far, even if 
mild weather continues. For the main stores of 
gum and starch are securely locked up, as we shall 
