10 ' FAMILIAR TREES 



tree is not often more than fifty or sixty feet high, 

 and seldom seems to attain an age of more than 

 from two hundred to two hundred and fifty years. 

 Towards the end of March the boughs attract 

 attention by the swelling of their large buds, that are 

 at this season well enclosed in a series of opposite 

 scales, of which the outermost are hard and of a dark 

 chocolate colour. • They continue to enlarge, and the 

 glutinous cement that has protected them during 

 winter now liquefies into a gum, or slime, that covers 

 the eight or ten deciduous scales. Two by two these 

 open outwards and fall off, until, in April, first one 

 pair and then another pair of the delicate green 

 leaflets make their appearance. The pale buff innei 

 bud-scales, delicately fringed at their edges, at the 

 bleak, leafless period of the end of March, render the 

 tree attractive, suggesting a candelabrum of unlighted 

 waxen tapers ; but 



" When drooping chestnut buds began 

 To spread into the perfect fan," 



they must have often seemed to many people as 

 tongues of brilliant green flame, the vividness of their 

 verdure, as seen scattered over the unclothed boughs, 

 and illumined by the fitful gleams of an April sun, 

 being excelled by none of the varied shades of green 

 displayed by nature in that season of new-born youth. 

 The leaves are composed of seven leaflets arranged in 

 a radiating " digitate " or " palmate " manner, and each 

 of a peculiar outline, broad at the outer end and 

 tapering towards the point of their insertion on their 

 common leaf-stalk — a form known technically as 

 " obovate-cuneate." At first these leaflets are downy 



