LIFE AND CHANCE 
cropped back by the cattle; the first shoot is 
browsed off half its length or more, but the push 
of life is behind it, and it throws out one or more 
lateral shoots; the ends of these are nipped, and the 
shoots that remain again subdivide, thus causing 
the would-be tree to spread out wider and wider 
upon the ground. The cropping continues, every 
new shoot is nipped, and the bush rises slowly as its 
circle extends farther and farther. Its progress is 
slow. Every season it goes through the same ordeal; 
every nip from the cows is met by new subdivisions 
of the shoots, till the rising bush becomes an impen- 
etrable network of short, thorny branches. The 
mass is so dense that only the small birds can enter 
it. I have seen a song sparrow take refuge in it when 
hotly pursued by a hawk. The hawk flies round and 
round, unable to reach his victim. As inevitably as 
fate, the mass rises in the form of a cone, pushing its 
enemy farther and farther away till it is four or five 
feet high and as many feet broad at the base. Its 
triumph is now near at hand. Its top reaches a point 
where the cattle do not easily reach; they neglect 
the central twig at the apex of the cone; this shoots 
up, and having the whole push of the extensive root 
system of the tree behind it, grows rapidly as if in 
a race for life. I see such a red-thorn daily in my 
walks. Last year. it won with this central shoot; this 
year it has made rapid progress, and now it has a 
stalk two feet high which the cattle cannot again 
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