YOUNGER YEARS OF A PLANT. 181 



the elastic stems contract once more, and, with like won- 

 derful instinct, carry the seed vessels down and bury them 

 in the watery bed of the stream, where alone they can 

 hope to find all the requisites for their future growth and 

 welfare. 



The stems or trunks, finally, indicate in all long-lived 

 plants the age with unerring accuracy. Their growth 

 being limited only by external causes, the years of trees 

 are seen in their size, and this union of age with the 

 manifestation of constantly renewed vigor, is a charm pe- 

 culiar to the life of plants. Animals, however curious, 

 beautiful or imposing, have still a limited size and figure 

 plants alone grow without limit, and bring forth new roots 

 and new branches as long as they live. This gives to very 

 ancient trees, especially, a monumental character, and has 

 ever inspired nations with a kind of instinctive reverence, 

 which from the days of antiquity to our own has often 

 degenerated into open worship. Who has not heard of 

 the oaks of Mamre and the pilgrimages made to them 

 from the time of Abraham to that of Constantine or of 

 the far-famed cedars of Lebanon, which have always been 

 distinguished as objects of regard and veneration, so that 

 no threat of Sennacherib was more dreaded than that he 

 would level them to the ground 1 ? Herodotus dwells with 

 delighted sympathy on the marks of respect with which 

 Xerxes loaded the famous plane-tree of Lydia, while he 

 decked it with gold ornaments and intrusted it to the care 

 of one of his ten thousand " Immortals." As forest trees 

 increase by coatings from without, the growth of each 

 year forming a ring round the centre of the stem, the 



