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The Museum Gazette 



will become adapted to them. The adaptations which have 

 been effected are exceedingly varied in character, and many 

 of them very curious. They have for a common end the 

 enabling of the individual or the species to survive a period 

 of privation due on the one hand to depression of tempera- 

 ture, and on the other to reduced supply of food. It may be 

 of interest to glance briefly at some of these. 

 We will begin with Vegetables. 



A large proportion of our English trees, on the approach of 

 winter, loosen their leaves and let them drop. Thus they 

 avoid the breaking of their branches which would otherwise 

 occur from snow, and are in much less danger of being up- 

 rooted by high wind. The riddance of the leaves, the active 

 agents in digestive and other changes, also makes possible the 

 sleep of trees. Hibernation results. The tree remains alive 

 but it does not breathe, and its juices, if they move at all, 

 do so very sluggishly. Now is the time for the new wood to 

 harden, for the sap, no longer attracted upwards by the leaves, 

 can expend its powers in perfecting the summer's work. It is 

 a suggestive fact that the larch, which sheds its leaves and 

 goes to sleep in winter, makes much better wood than the 

 Scotch pine, which keeps them, and in some sense remains 

 awake. It is better to do the right thing at the right time. 



Of those trees which in England do not drop their leaves, 

 it is in a general sense true that they do not spread their 

 branches widely. Many of them are conical in form and 

 slope their branches upwards rather than outwards. Others, 

 like the yew or holly, grow slowly, and form very strong 

 wood, and produce very stiff foliage. Others have wood 

 which in flexibility and spring-power approaches whalebone. 

 Thus the cedar is fabled to shake off the snow. 



Another large section of the vegetable world comprising 

 representatives of various tribes have adopted the plan of 

 not only losing their foliage, but also their stems, and of 

 dying down to the part protected by the earth. Their roots 

 only, with an attached root stock or buib, live through the 



