SYMBIOSIS OF THE HEATHER. 



which prepares its food for it, and reduces the peat 

 on which it grows to a condition which it is able 

 to absorb and circulate as food throughout its system. 

 If you dig up carefully a Heather bush by the roots, 

 and examine the finer fibers at the end of these roots, 

 you will find that they are covered with a thin, whit- 

 ish mantle or cobweb of delicate threads. This is 

 not a part of the roots ; it does not belong to the 

 Heather at all. It is a separate living plant growing 

 on the Heather roots the spawn of a minute fungus. 

 It is found upon every Heather bush, and spreads from 

 root to root, causing all the wide acres of bright 

 moorland vegetation to flourish from year to year by 

 its living action. The connection between these two 

 organisms is not only of the closest character ; it is 

 also lifelong. When once the partnership is formed it 

 continues uninterruptedly as long as they both exist. 

 As the roots grow and spread, the spawn of the fun- 

 gus grows and spreads with them. Were this living 

 fungous growth to be taken away from the roots of 

 the Heather, the bush, even if supplied with every 

 other requisite, growing in its own proper soil, and 

 furnished with its own suitable food, would soon 

 wither and die. The true secret of the failure which 

 so often attends the transplanting of Heather is, that 

 in the process this fungous growth is torn away from 

 the roots, and it takes some time to form a new 

 growth of it in the new soil, while in the meantime 

 the Heather, bereft of its accustomed partner, lan- 

 guishes and dies. The first Scottish emigrants to 

 Canada took with them some Heather bushes to plant 

 in the new country in order to remind them of the 

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