464 THE POWERS OF VEGETATION. 



THE POWERS OF VEGETATION. 



IN those good days of old, when there were no corn-factors in 

 England to counteract that part of our Redeemer's prayer, " Give us 

 this day our daily bread," by hoarding up vast stores of grain, until 

 mouldiness and vermin have rendered it unfit for the use of man, 

 there stood at Walton Hall a water-mill, for the interest of the pro- 

 prietor and the good of the country round. Time, the great anni- 

 hilator of all human inventions, saving taxation and the national 

 debt, laid this fabric low in ruins some sixty years ago ; and nothing 

 now remains to show the place where it once stood, except a 

 massive millstone, which measures full seventeen feet in circum- 

 ference. The ground where the mill stood having been converted 

 into meadow, this stone lay there unnoticed and unknown (save by 

 the passing hay-maker) from the period of the mill's dissolution to 

 the autumn of the year 1813, when one of our nut-eating wild ani- 

 mals, probably by way of winter store, deposited a few nuts under its 

 protecting cover. In the course of the following summer, a single 

 nut having escaped the teeth of the destroyer, sent up its verdant 

 shoot through the hole in the centre of the procumbent millstone. 

 One day I pointed out this rising tree to a gentleman who was 

 standing by ; and I said, " If this young plant escape destruction, 

 some time or other it will support the millstone, and raise it from 

 the ground." He seemed to doubt this. In order, however, that 

 the plant might have a fair chance of success, I directed that it 

 should be defended from accident and harm by means of a wooden 

 paling. Year after year it increased in size, and beauty ; and when 

 its expansion had entirely filled the hole in the centre of the mill- 

 stone, it gradually began to raise up the millstone itself from the 

 seat of its long repose. This huge mass of stone is now eight inches 

 above the ground, and is entirely supported by the stern of the nut 

 tree, which has risen to the height of twenty-five feet, and bears 

 excellent fruit. 



Strangers often inspect this original curiosity. When I meet a 

 visitor whose mild physiognomy informs me that his soul is proof 



