a wide angle from the twig, with the surface of the leaf horizontal. In this case space is not so curtailed; the leaf is larger, and more or less circular in outline; and the great increase of length in the internodes, as compared with the trees lately considered, prevents a too great overshadowing of the lower leaves by those higher up the shoot. In plants which have a very short axis--which have in popular language “no stem”--a difficulty arises as to how all the leaves shall receive a due amount of light, since all arise from the same point. This is met in several ways. The leaves are often placed at different angles, the outer leaves, which are the lowest and oldest, spreading horizontally near the ground, the newest rising almost vertically in the centre, the intermediate being disposed at various angles between these extremes. Another solution of the difficulty is effected by a continued growth of the leaf-stalks, each leaf steadily pushing itself outward so that the whole form a slowly expanding circle, in which each leaf-blade successively occupies a position commencing at the centre, ending at the circumference. Such leaf-blades, it is almost needless to say, are widest at the extremity, since that is the portion which receives most light; often the blade is roundish, and placed at the end of a bare leaf-stalk, which pushes it further and further from the centre, as other leaves arise. Such arrangements are well seen in many of our biennial plants. During their first season they form a close leaf-rosette of this kind, which manufactures during the summer and winter a supply of plant-food to be stored for the building up of the tall flowering stem of the succeeding year. The stork’s-bills, crane’s-bills, teazel, and other plants will occur to the reader as examples. In the case of some plants, the normal position of the blade of the leaf is not horizontal, but vertical. The black poplar and its relation the aspen furnish well-known instances. If we examine the stalk of an aspen leaf we notice that while the lower part of it is circular in section, the part near the leaf is much flattened, permitting free movement in the plane of the leaf-blade. This, together with the position in which the leaves are borne on the twigs, causes the leaves to hang vertically. One result is that the light can stream almost unbroken through the branches even to the ground below, the wealth of foliage producing but a faint tremulous shadow as the leaves rustle in response to every breath of air. Well does Scott, seeking for a simile, say in _Marmion_: “Variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made.”