

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLANT. 



to his daughter Miranda the conduct of his ''perfidious" brother, the usurping 

 Duke of Milan, as 



" Having both the key 



Of officer and office, set all hearts i' the state 



To what tune pleased his ear ; that now he was 



The ivy, which had hid my princely trunk, 



And suck'd my verdure out on't." 1 



Again, in the " Comedy of Errors," Adriana believes that she is reproaching 

 her husband, Antipholus of Ephesus, when she is really confronting his twin 

 brother, Antipholus of Syracuse, and vainly endeavouring to rouse in him a 

 response to her own affection : 



" Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine ; 

 Thou art an elm, my husband, I, a vine ; 

 Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, 

 Makes me with thy strength to communicate : 

 If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, 

 Usurping ivy, briar, or idle moss : 

 Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion 

 Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion." 2 



In the few extracts from botanical works given above to set forth the 

 opinions of botanists on the nature of the holding fibres, it is distinctly 

 asserted that these do not obtain nourishment, and that is equivalent to 

 saying that the ivy is not a parasite, though in very few books of authority 

 shall we find an unequivocal declaration on the subject. The matter is not dis- 

 posed of, however, by the assertion that the claws become roots, or that an 

 isolated sheet of ivy will continue to thrive for years on an old bastion, or a 

 wall of great thickness. Does the ivy subsist on living trees when isolated ? 

 That is the question. Now it may be safely affirmed that it does live for 

 some time, say a year or two ; for we may often find in the woods examples 

 of isolated ivies in a thriving state, and may fairly judge by the appearance 

 of the stem where it has been severed, that some considerable time has elapsed 

 since the deed was done. Bat a sufficiently striking example has never come 

 under our observation ; such as we have seen were small, and might have 

 had unseen connections with the earth ; we have never met with a grand 

 poll of ivy clustering at the summit of a living tree and indubitably cut 



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