12 Some Aspects of Plant- Life. [Sess. 



lands might well envy ; and many a stranger from warmer 

 lands envies us the rich verdure of our turf, so different from 

 the sere and brown slopes seen even in early summer in 

 countries like Greece and Asia Minor. 



Coniferous trees offer a pleasing variety of colour and form 

 in our woodlands. They relieve the nakedness of winter, and 

 contrast well with the massive outlines of oaks, beeches, elms, 

 and plane-trees ; but they do not show the variety of under- 

 growth that we meet with in a deciduous wood. A few 

 scanty ferns, heathbells, foxgloves, and coarse grasses are 

 among the few plants one sees under closely-planted coni- 

 fers. Sometimes there is practically nothing under them 

 except the thick covering of fallen pine-needles. 



Birch-woods are among the most beautiful of our wood- 

 lands, and are found at greater altitudes than most deciduous 

 trees. 



The characteristic methods of branching of our various trees 

 are well brought out in winter. I wonder how many people 

 ask themselves the reason of this peculiar stripping of the 

 trees that comes every year. We are far too apt to leave 

 behind us the inquiring mind of childhood, and to drop the 

 attitude of healthy curiosity which is the source of all 

 progress. Perhaps it is because modern education tells us too 

 much and crushes out independent thinking with the very 

 load of its information. I know I never asked myself why 

 the trees were stripped in late autumn and early winter, leav- 

 ing the skeleton trunks in all their hard nakedness. The 

 explanation of the change lies in the fact that winter is to the 

 tree a time of drought ; for, owing to the coldness of the soil, 

 the activity of the plant is at a minimum. Hence, if trans- 

 piration went on through the leaves as usual, the tree would 

 soon use up the scanty water-supply afforded by the roots in 

 winter and would perish of drought. Deciduous trees have 

 solved the problem of existence under these conditions by 

 casting their leafy garments, and so conserving their reduced 

 water-supply. 



I suppose that to the Persian or the Arab a grove of date- 

 palms looks as the birks of Aberfeldy look to a Scotsman. 

 On such a " strip with herbage grown, That just divides the 

 desert from the sown," was Omar Khayyam wont to muse. 



