The fertilized bloom soon ceases to be a little Christmas candle on the tree top, closes its tiny scales over its growing seeds and becomes a little green cone, still sitting upright on the upper branch tip where it grew. By autumn it is an inch and a half long, the short peduncle which attaches it to the branch has lengthened and thickened, but is not able to hold it wholly erect, so much has it gained in weight. At that season the young cone and its fellows have tipped over horizontal or even becomes slightly pendulous. Thus it remains through the winter, its scales pressed close to its core and to one another, defending the tender seeds from all cold and making a seemingly solid chunk of the whole. Toward spring I have known squirrels to attack these young cones, but rarely, and I am not sure whether it was because of the pressure of hunger or whether some young squirrel's instinct to sharpen his teeth on them made him a bit precocious. These adolescent cones begin growing again very early in the spring. Youth will have its way, and in this case it seems to seize on the first sap that gets as far as the topmost branch tips, compelling it to the nourishing of the young cones before it can go to the making of new leaves or even of the crop of staminate and pistillate blossoms for the ensuing summer. The cones add a quarter of an inch to their length before the blossoms of that year appear, and their weight sags them still more on the stem, making them distinctly pendulous. By the last of August these greedy feeders have not only ripened the seeds within the still close-pressed scales, but have multiplied their own length by four, being four to six inches long and hanging pretty nearly straight down by their weight.