100 TENDEIL-BEAEEES. Chap. III. 



curled round and firmly seized an excessively minute 

 projecting point of bark, and then the other branches 

 spread themselves out, following with accuracy every 

 inequality of the surface. I afterwards placed near 

 the plant a post without bark but much fissured, and 

 the points of the tendrils crawled into all the crevices 

 in a beautiful manner. To my surprise, I observed 

 that the tips of the immature tendrils, with the 

 branches not yet fully separated, likewise crawled 

 just like roots into the minutest crevices. In two 

 or three days after the tips had thus crawled into 

 the crevices, or after their hooked ends had seized 

 minute points, the final process, now to be described, 

 commenced. 



This process I discovered by having accidentally 

 left a piece of wool near a tendril ; and this led me to 

 bind a quantity of flax, moss, and wool loosely round 

 sticks, and to place them near tendrils. The wool must 

 not be dyed, for these tendrils are excessively sensitive 

 to some poisons. The hooked points soon caught hold 

 of the fibres, even loosely floating fibres, and now there 

 was no recoiling ; on the contrary, the excitement 

 caused the hooks to penetrate the fibrous mass and 

 to curl inwards, so that each hook caught firmly one 

 or two fibres, or a small bundle of them. The tips 

 and the inner surfaces of the hooks now began to swell, 

 and in two or three days were visibly enlarged. After 

 a few more days the hooks were converted into whitish, 

 irregular balls, rather above the 20-th of an inch (1*27 

 mm.) in diameter, formed of coarse cellular tissue. 



