556 



The Museum Gazette 



to itself or to the minute attacking insect. Such growths are 

 exceedingly common on trees, and may be seen low on the 

 boles of many Planes. They are sometimes of enormous size, 

 as, for instance, on those in Berkeley Square. It is seldom, 

 however, that so fine a specimen as this one can be found. 



Before leaving his seat the observer will do well to look at 

 the hanging seed vessels on the Plane, and to notice that they 

 are very abundant on some boughs and almost absent on 

 many. This proves that there is a certain amount of in- 

 dividuality, not only in different trees of the same species, 

 but in different branches of the same tree. The botanist 

 recognises this fact under the name of bud-variation, and well 

 knows that every bud has its own personality, which it does 

 not wholly share with the parent tree. In this instance a 

 bough which hangs to the south, and is against the sky when 

 the eye is directed to the builder's tall crane now in position, 

 is festooned with long pendant seed vessels, and there are 

 scarcely any on other parts. The same tendency may be 

 observed on other trees : in some only certain small branches 

 or twigs have seeds, whilst in others they are sparingly scat- 

 tered over the whole tree. 



On rising from the seat where he has been placed, the 

 observer should look into the tree which he has been sitting 

 under. He will see a very noteworthy example of the ability 

 which most trees have to permit their branches to grow back 

 again into the parent stock or to unite with some adjacent 

 branch. A bough as thick as a child's thigh passes upwards 

 quite separately for about eighteen inches, then inclines towards 

 the trunk, joins it, and is absolutely lost. An open space is 

 thus enclosed through which a small baby might be squeezed. 

 This estimate of size is suggested by the fact that in the days of 

 superstition such clefts were valued for that purpose and were 

 esteemed useful for the cure of certain infantile ailments. In 

 this instance no ridge is seen to indicate that the bole above 

 has received any additions from the coalesced branch which 

 has joined it. The condition is suggestive of the rounded 



