A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS. 137 



suspend high in the air from branch to branch, and cover 

 them with clay ; here they dwell, and in a dark night 

 the amazed and bewildered traveller may see the fires 

 of their dwellings high in the tops of lofty forests. 



More civilized countries even have not left us without 

 similar, though isolated instances of men who have found 

 a dwelling in the trees of the forest. Evelyn tells us 

 of the huge trunk of an oak in Oxfordshire, which served 

 long as a prison for felons ; and he who lived in the 

 shades of old Selborne "so lovely and sweet," mentions 

 an elm on Blechington Green, which gave for months re- 

 ception and shelter to a poor woman, whom the inhospi- 

 table people would not receive into their houses. When 

 she reappeared among them, he says, she held a lusty boy 

 in her arms. Men are, however, more frequently buried 

 than born in trees. The natives of the eastern coast of 

 Africa hollow out soft, worm-eaten Boababs, and bury in 

 them those who are suspected of holding communion w r ith 

 evil spirits. Their bodies, thus suspended in the dry cham- 

 bers of the trunk, soon become perfect mummies. The 

 Indians of Maine had a more touching custom of the kind. 

 They used to turn up a young maple-tree, place the body 

 of a dead chief underneath, and then let the roots spring 

 back, thus erecting a sylvan monument to his memory. 



Where there is life, there are plants, and on land and 

 on water, on the loftiest mountain top, and in the very 

 bowels of the earth, every where does man find a plant 

 to minister to his support and enjoyment, every where he 

 sees plants quietly and mysteriously perform their humble 

 duty in the great household of nature. Plants alone 



