Sense-Life and Sensibility 



u From its earliest moments it had had to send out its 

 blind rootlets on a long and difficult search for a pre- 

 carious supply of water and of leaf-mould. But that 

 is just the usual hereditary task which falls to the lot of 

 this species, and which too well understands the arid 

 nature of the Midi (South of France). 



" Its young stem had to solve a problem much more 

 serious and unexpected. It had left the vertical position, 

 so that its head, instead of rising up towards the heavens, 

 inclined over the ravine. It was then obliged, in spite 

 of the growing weight of its branches, to change its first 

 intentions and curve backwards towards the smooth 

 rock surface, where its disconcerted stem had to main- 

 tain itself like a swimmer who throws his head back, 

 and so, upright towards the heavens, sustain by its own 

 determination the stresses and incessant strains due to 

 its heavy crown of foliage. 



" Moreover, upon this vital complex had been concen- 

 trated all the preoccupation, all the free and intelligent 

 genius of the tree. 



11 The enormous elbow-like hypertrophied curve of its 

 stem revealed one after another the successive anxieties 

 of a kind of reasoning that knew how to profit by the 

 warnings that rain and storm had given. 



° Year after year as the heavy dome of foliage increased 

 in weight, without any care save that of expanding in 

 the warmth of the sunlight, there was all the time an 

 obscure canker corroding deeply the great basal arm 

 which held it up. 



"Then in obedience to some instinct of a quite un- 

 known character, two solid roots, two knotted cables 

 springing from the trunk more than 2 feet above the band, 

 had managed to fasten the tree to the granite face." 



In this passage, as in the whole of the essay referred 

 to, the author simply endows plants with reason and 



144 



