270 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



enemies. It bears no prickles on it's trunk, and 

 in it's branches ; but at the height of ten or twelve 

 feet, precifely at the place where the tree begins to 

 branch off, there is a belt of feveral rows of large 

 thorns, from ten to twelve inches in length, pré- 

 fenting an impenetrable rampart of fpikes, nearly 

 refembling the iron head of a halberd. The collar 

 of the tree is encircled by it in fuch a manner, that 

 it is impoffible for any quadruped to get up. The 

 acacia of America, improperly called the falfe-aca- 

 cia, has it's prickles formed into hooks, and. fcat- 

 tered over it's branches, undoubtedly from fome 

 unknown relation of oppofition to the fpecies of 

 quadruped which makes war on the bird that in- 

 habits it. 



There are, in the Antilles Iflands, trees which 

 have no thorny prickles, but which are much more 

 ingpnionfly protected than if they had. A plant 

 known in thofe countries by the name of the 

 prickly thiftle, which is a fpecies of creeping 

 taper, attaches it's roots, fimilar to filaments, to the 

 trunk of one of thofe trees, and runs to the ground 

 «11 around it, to a confiderable diftance, crofTing 



rieties of all her productions, in all Countries, in order to be- 

 ftow upon them relations adapted to the elements and to animals ; 

 and when we do not find in thefe the characters which we have 

 affxgned to them, the charge of falfhood is not, in juftice, to be 

 fixed on her Works, but on our fyftems. 



it's 



