SUBTERBANEAN WILLOWS. 



107 



points of concentration along the stems, in a young growth of saplings, 

 such as are produced in healthy trees of the species when pollarded, 

 or cut over above the root, but deficient in respect of luxuriancy, 

 vigour, and numbers. 



I visited the place on the 14th of October 1843, and examined 

 the present position of the trees. The fosse in which they occur re- 

 sembles a canal or reservoir, the bottom of which is covered with 

 water, partly from the influx of the tide, and the drainage of the 

 soil, but principally from a stream passing along its edge having ac- 

 cess to it. To the eye this does not appear, the surface being matted 

 with a rush of grasses, junci,and marsh-frequenting plants, or spotted 

 at intervals with annually widening patches of verdure, derived either 

 from seeds mixed in unimpaired soundness with the mould, or that 

 floated hither by the winds and currents have obtained befitting 

 and congenial sites. The young willows are scattered along the 

 bottom of this excavation, as if it had been the original elevation of 

 the ground, whence they drew their pristine sustenance. I met with 

 the remains of two trees, and the stumps and roots of three others, 

 from which recent shoots had issued. One of them was a fragment 

 of nigh twelve feet in length, with a diameter of one foot nine inches. 

 One half of the trunk was corroded and gone, the remainder was 

 exceedingly black, rotten, shivery, and, like most of bog timber when 

 a short time exposed, crumbling into dust between the fingers, or 

 beneath the foot, excepting at the knots, or as far as their indurating 

 influence had reached, where the wood was yet firm and tenacious. 

 It was from underneath one of these that a sapling had originated — 

 not now, however, in connection with the tree. Of this the tallest 

 wands were six feet six inches from the ground. The other tree had 

 a diameter of one foot, and was still more ruinous, being almost a com- 

 plete shell, disclosing in the interior a cankered mouldering material, 

 that exhibited in its cracks and fissures the skeleton structure of the 

 exanimate timber, — the rings of annual increase, and the medullary 

 rays. It had produced young bushes at two different places along 

 its length, and at a distance of several feet from each other. The 

 appearances presented at one of these centres of growth were verj 

 interesting, as explaining the process by which the fresh shoots, 

 though still preserving the position they occupied when sent off" from 

 the parent stock, were not now in union with it. At two points 

 where, during its former growth, branches seem to have diverged, two 

 willows had sprung, on contrary sides of the trunk. By groping 



