V 

 THE BRUSH PILE 



Today I visited the brush pile back of the orchard. 

 Here the trimmings of the winter are placed, waiting to 

 be burned when dry. How many are the archives that 

 will be destroyed! Here are histories in every bud and 

 twig and scar, of the seasons, of the accidents and deaths, 

 the records of the tree as there are records of families. 



These records are not written in numbers or in let- 

 ters, nor yet in hieroglyphs ; yet are they understandable. 

 Alphabet is not needed, and the key is simple. 



From the brush pile of records I took one. I must 

 describe it in part by a picture (Fig. 14). On the living 

 trees at this writing the petals mostly have fallen and the 

 leaves are nearly full grown. This branch was cut in 

 winter. It has lain in the snow and rain, putting forth 

 no flowers or leaves. Yet we can read it. 



It is May, 1921. The terminal shoot is obviously of 

 1920; we shall name it No. 1. It is a foot long, smooth 

 and glossy, terminating at the base (o) in a "ring" and at 

 a short stub or branchlet. If we count the buds on all 

 sides of the shoot and at the tip we find them to be 13. 

 The largest one is at the tip, and they are mostly suc- 

 cessively smaller toward the base. Apparently the 

 growth-energy was expended in the upper parts of the 



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