ss saved the baby tree.

"Another example of retrieving lost leaders may be quoted as
illustrative of many in similar circumstances. _Picea Webbiana_ had its
leader completely destroyed down to the first tier of laterals. There
was no such provision left for inducing leaf-buds as was the case with
_P. Lowii_ above referred to. Resort must, therefore, be had to one of
the best favoured laterals, but how is it to be coaxed from the
horizontal position of a lateral to the perpendicular position of a
leader? The uninitiated in these matters, and, in fact, practical
gardeners generally, would at once reply, by supporting to a stake with
the all-powerful Cuba or bast-matting. But no. A far simpler method than
that, namely, by fore-shortening all the laterals of the upper tier but
the one selected for a leader. Nature becomes the handmaid of art here;
for without the slightest prop the lateral gradually raises itself
erect, and takes the place of the lost leader. All that the operator
requires to attend to is the amputation of the laterals until this
adventitious fellow has gained a supremacy. Singular provision in nature
this, which, thanks to the undivided attention of a careful observer,
has been fully appreciated and utilized."

[211] 'Variation of Animals and Plants,' ii, p. 277.

[212] Quoted in 'Gard. Chron.,' 1867, p. 654.

[213] Loc. cit., p. 315.

[214] 'Rev. Hortic.,' 1868, p. 110.

[215] Planchon and Mares, 'Ann. Sc. Nat.,' 5 ser., tom. vi, 1866, p.
228, tab. xii.

[216] 'Bull. Acad. Belg.,' xviii, part ii, p. 293.

BOOK II.

DEVIATIONS FROM THE ORDINARY FORM OF ORGANS.

In a morphological point of view the form of the various parts or organs
of plants and the changes to which they are subjected during their
development are only second in importance to the diversities of
arrangement and, indeed, in some cases, do not in any degree hold a
second place.

Taken together, the arrangement, form, and number of the several parts
of the flower, make up what has been termed the symmetry of the
flower.[217] Referring to the assumed standard of comparison, see p. 4,
it will be seen that in the typically regular flower all the various
organs are supposed to be regular in their dimensions and form. At one
time it was even supposed that all flowers, no matter how irregular
they subsequently became, began by being strictly symmetrical or
regular, and that subsequent alterations were produced by inequality of