NOTES ON BUDS 
7 
The Society is now fairly well known, and is justifying its 
existence. Great visible achievements in the attempt to pre- 
serve wild life cannot be expected. The Society’s mode of 
influence is quiet, operating through the precept and example of 
individuals in many places ; but the sum of particular results 
may be large. The instruction of children is obviously of high 
value, and the Clapton Branch affords to other Branches a 
model of such work. 
The Selbornian proposition, generally, is hardly now a 
subject of controversy. The opposition is not argumentative, 
but is in the inert forces of apathy, insensibility, want of 
imagination. The growth of feeling in favour of preservation 
has, indeed, grown remarkably in the last fifteen years, and is 
now so widely diffused that the prospect is encouraging within 
the possibilities of the case. But the development of indus- 
trialism and the growth of population encroach surely year by 
year on the extent of the possible. The land whose physical 
conditions allow the existence of wild life is shrinking before 
an irresistible human expansion. To tilt at brick walls is 
foolish, if not worse. It wastes time, and breaks the weapons 
which might be used against proper and vulnerable foes. Nor 
let us repine. The victories of man are glorious, though, as 
in all victories, there are losses. Let us be practical. The 
inevitable sophistication of nature in one place makes the effort 
to preserve the spirit of nature in another, where it may be 
effectual, all the more needful. The encouragement of the 
study of natural history must, under all conditions of life and 
locality, be of great benefit, and nowhere can it be unsuitable 
to teach that the dominion of man over nature is not a dominion 
rightly exercisable in the gratification of caprice, or for selfish 
greed, but that man should rather be the guardian of, and in a 
sort the trustee for, his humble fellow-dwellers on the earth. 
J. L. Otter. 
NOTES ON BUDS. 
NTRODUCTION. — From the present time until spring 
returns, is afforded the opportunity of studying the 
structure and behaviour of buds when expanding. 
They are primarily the result of the lowering of tem- 
perature in autumn ; for as soon as this rises above a certain 
degree they burst open and begin to grow. But the elements of 
a bud are not merely or entirely arrested structures, whether 
temporarily or not, as are the minute leaves within them ; for 
the outer “ bud-scales ” are special formations protecting the 
more delicate parts within. Now these scales are not always 
the same thing, for nature is never at a loss to make any struc- 
ture, and if it be not convenient to construct it out of one thing 
