Editorial Notes 



233 



The catkins of the stamen flowers are, at the present time, 

 abundant, and although they will not open till next April, 

 they silently proclaim the perennial confidence of Nature, and 

 whisper that " spring is coming." Let us listen to their lesson 

 and look forward with joy and trust. 



As regards the changes in colour of autumn leaves and 

 their tendency to drop off, it may be taken as a general fact 

 that both are caused either by age or injury. The life of the 

 leaf is at low ebb and its vital changes can no longer be main- 

 tained. This is the main fact, the rest is detail. There is a 

 limit of life imposed upon plants as well as on animals, which 

 may be made to vary a little but which cannot be escaped. 

 Senility may be hastened by the wear and tear of life or may 

 be delayed by judicious protection, but it will come at last. 

 In some instances we see the whole organism growing old 

 simultaneously and in others only parts or appendages ; such 

 as the hair, teeth, and feathers in animals and the leaves in 

 plants. 



Everyone knows what it is to have cold hands and feet, and 

 expects that the nose-end and the ears will be the parts to 

 follow if the exposure be prolonged. The explanation is that 

 these parts are at a disadvantage as regards the circulation of 

 their blood, and that the cold air gets at them, as it were, on 

 all sides. No one fears to be frost-bitten on his cheeks or his 

 shoulders. The changes which we observe in leaves are, many 

 of them, exactly parallel to what occur to us in cold hands or 

 feet and of which frost-bite is a final result. Very often it is 

 the extreme tip or the border of a leaf which suffers first. 

 Physicians have a learned term for such changes. They 

 speak of them as acroteric, that is, incidental to the extreme 

 points or periphery, and when a person is very liable to have 

 the fingers become blue or white from exposure to cold they 

 say that he has acroteric susceptibilities. g^Such conditions 

 are often, in the human subject, quite transitory, and may occur 



