re quite
infinite. Infinite is a word easily said, and easily written, and people
do not always mean it when they say it; in this case I _do_ mean it: the
number of systems is incalculable, and even to furnish anything like a
representative number of types, I should have to give several hundreds
of figures such as Fig. 44.[60]

[Illustration: FIG. 43.]

[Illustration: FIG. 44.]

[Illustration: FIG. 45.]

211. Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the great
relations of stem and branches. The forms of the branches themselves are
regulated by still more subtle laws, for they occupy an intermediate
position between the form of the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a
flat ramification; the tree a completely rounded one; the bough is
neither rounded nor flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between
the two, in a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling in
shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir
cone; by combination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves
compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out to you the general
resemblance of these branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be
more accurately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a
very broad-headed and flattened boat applied by its keel to the end of a
main branch,[61] as in Fig. 45, the lines which its ribs will take,
supposing them outside of its timbers instead of inside, and the general
contour of it, as seen in different directions, from above and below,
will give you the closest approximation to the perspectives and
foreshortenings of a well-grown branch-flake. Fig. 25 above, p. 89, is
an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of healthy young oak; and, if you
compare it with Fig. 45, you will understand at once the action of the
lines of leafage; the boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are
too nearly parallel to each other at the sides, while the bough sends
all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the head, that it may
accomplish its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet always
securing the compliance with the great universal law that the branches
nearest the root bend most back; and, of course, throwing _some_ always
back as well as forwards; the appearance of reversed action being much
increased, and rendered more striking and beautiful, by perspective.
Fig. 25 shows the perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below;
Fig. 46 gives r