lO 
INTRODUCTORY. 
A few words on the life of a tree may be welcomed here by 
those readers who have not made a study of botany. Although 
the nurseryman makes use of suckers and cuttings for the 
quicker multiplication of certain species, eveiy tree in its 
natural habitat produces seeds and is reproduced by them. 
The flowering of our forest trees is a phenomenon that does not 
as a rule attract attention, but their fruiting or seed-bearing 
becomes patent to all who visit the woods in autumn. A tree 
has lived many years before it is capable of producing seed. 
The seed-bearing age is different in each species ; thus the 
Oak begins to bear when it is between sixty and seventy years 
old, the Ash between forty and fifty, the Birch and Sweet Chest- 
nut at twenty-five years. Some produce seed every year after 
that period is reached, others eveiy second, third, or fifth year ; 
others, again, bear fitfully except at intervals of from six to nine 
years, when they produce an enormous crop. Most tree-seeds 
germinate in the spring following their maturity, but they are 
not all distributed when ripe. The Birch, the Elm, and the 
Aspen, for examples, retain their seeds until spring, and these 
germinate soon after they have been dispersed. 
The seeds contain sufficient nutriment to feed the seedling 
whilst it is developing it roots and first real leaves. We can, of 
course, go further back in starting our observations of the life 
progress of the monarch of the forest. We can dissect the 
insignificant greenish flower of the Oak when the future seed 
(acorn) is but a single cell, a tiny bag filled with protoplasm. 
From that early stage to the period when the tree is first ripe 
for conversion into timber we span a century and a half, equal 
to two good human lives, and the Oak is but at the point where 
a man attains his majority. The Oak is built up after the 
fashion by which man attains to his full stature. It is a process 
of multiplication of weak, minute cells, which become specialized 
for distinct offices in the economy of the vegetable community 
we call a tree. Some go to renew and enlarge the roots, others 
