branches,
and then to put the leaves on. And in speaking of trees generally, be it
observed, when I say _all_ trees, I mean only those ordinary forest or
copse trees of Europe, which are the chief subjects of the landscape
painter. I do not mean to include every kind of foliage which by any
accident can find its way into a picture, but the ordinary trees of
Europe,--oak, elm, ash, hazel, willow, birch, beech, poplar, chestnut,
pine, mulberry, olive, ilex, carubbe, and such others. I do not purpose
to examine the characteristics of each tree; it will be enough to
observe the laws common to all. First, then, neither the stems nor the
boughs of any of the above trees _taper_, except where they fork.
Wherever a stem sends off a branch, or a branch a lesser bough, or a
lesser bough a bud, the stem or the branch is, on the instant, less in
diameter by the exact quantity of the branch or the bough they have sent
off, and they remain of the same diameter; or if there be any change,
rather increase than diminish until they send off another branch or
bough. This law is imperative and without exception; no bough, nor stem,
nor twig, ever tapering or becoming narrower towards its extremity by a
hairbreadth, save where it parts with some portion of its substance at a
fork or bud, so that if all the twigs and sprays at the top and sides of
the tree, which are, and _have been_, could be united without loss of
space, they would form a round log of the diameter of the trunk from
which they spring.

Sec. 3. Appearance of tapering caused by frequent buds.

But as the trunks of most trees send off twigs and sprays of light under
foliage, of which every individual fibre takes precisely its own
thickness of wood from the parent stem, and as many of these drop off,
leaving nothing but a small excrescence to record their existence, there
is frequently a slight and delicate appearance of tapering bestowed on
the trunk itself; while the same operation takes place much more
extensively in the branches, it being natural to almost all trees to
send out from their young limbs more wood than they can support, which,
as the stem increases, gets contracted at the point of insertion, so as
to check the flow of the sap, and then dies and drops off, leaving all
along the bough, first on one side, then on another, a series of small
excrescences, sufficient to account for a degree of tapering, which is
yet so very slight, that if we select a portion of a