THE WOOD. 71 



from the owner of the orchard into which you in- 

 troduce your troublesome visitor. Valuable as our 

 forefathers deemed it, it will now yield, in exchange 

 for the nourishment which it withdraws from his 

 trees, nothing but a few sorry berries, useful for 

 no purpose but that of being converted into bird- 

 lime. 



One of our very common plants may be termed 

 a half-parasite, namely, the Ivy. It inserts its 

 principal roots into the ground, and extends its 

 branches, as you must have many times observed, 

 along the surface of anything near it, such as walls, 

 rocks, and trunks of trees. If you attempt to 

 separate one of these young climbing stems from 

 the substance over which it grows, you will see 

 that it adheres very closely by means of numerous 

 fibres, springing from the innermost side of the 

 shoot. If the substance to which it clings be soft, 

 and capable of affording the plant nourishment, 

 these fibres become proper roots; this you may 

 prove by cutting the stem asunder, beneath the 

 point of union, when the upper portion will con- 

 tinue to flourish as before. If, however, the sur- 

 face to which they adhere be hard, the fibres 

 become dilated at the extremity, and seem only 

 to bind the plant to its supporter. The smoother 

 the surface is, the wider is the dilated disk, which 

 seems to know, as it were instinctively, that a slen- 

 der point could not attach itself to any but a 

 rugged substance. The Ivy, when young, has not 

 much to boast of on the score of beauty, except 

 upon close examination, and then its glossy green, 

 or pink leaves, with their meandering white veins 

 intersecting each other in every direction, are 

 very pretty. Sometimes (this is particularly ob- 



