STUDY XI. 27I 



k*s branches one over another, and forming an in- 

 clofure of them, which no quadruped dares to ap- 

 proach. It likewife produces a fruit very grateful 

 to the palate. On beholding a tree, the foliage of 

 which is harmlefs, filled with birds that have there 

 fixed their habitation, furrounded about the roots 

 by one of thofe prickly thiftles, and you are pre- 

 fented with the idea of one of thofe commercial 

 defencelefs cities, apparently acceffible on every 

 fide, but protected all around by a citadel, en- 

 compaffing it with extended intrenchments. Thus 

 the tree is on one fide, and it's thorn on the other. 



Quadrupeds which live on the eggs of birds, 

 would be reduced to great diftrefs, did not Nature 

 fometimes produce, on the fummits of thofe very 

 trees, a vegetable of very extraordinary form, which 

 opens a paffage to them. It is, in every refpect, 

 the oppofite of the prickly thiftle. It is a root of 

 two feet in length, as thick as a man's leg, prick- 

 ed, as if pierced with a bodkin, and adhering to a 

 branch of the tree, by a multitude of filaments, 

 fomewhat in the fame way that the prickly thiftle 

 is affixed to the under part of it's trunk. Like the 

 other, it derives it's nourifhment from the tree, and 

 emits from ten to twelve great leaves, in form of 

 a heart, of about three feet in length, and two feet 

 in breadth, refembling the leaves of the nymphœa. 

 Father du îertre calls it the felfe-root of China. 



What 



