II. THE BOOT. 29 



effort and vital stability, both in themselves, and for the 

 human States they form. 



5. In this function of holding fast, roots have a power 

 of grasp quite different from that of branches. It is not a 

 grasp, or clutch by contraction, as that of a bird's claw, or 

 of the small branches we call ' tendrils ' in climbing plants. 

 It is a dead, clumsy, but inevitable grasp, by swelling, after 

 contortion. For there is this main difference between a 

 branch and root, that a branch cannot grow vividly but in 

 certain directions and relations to its neighbour branches ; 

 but a root can grow wherever there is earth, and can turn 

 in any direction to avoid an obstacle.* 



G. In thus contriving access for itself where it chooses, 

 a root contorts itself into more serpent-like writhing than 

 branches can ; and when it has once coiled partly round 

 a rock, or stone, it grasps it tight, necessarily, merely by 

 swelling. Now a root has force enough sometimes to split 

 rocks, but not to crush them ; so it is compelled to grasp 

 by flattening as it thickens ; and, as it must have room 

 somewhere, it alters its own shape as if it were made of 



* " Duhamel, botanist of the last century, tells us that, wishing to 

 preserve a field of good land from the roots of an avenue of elms which 

 were exhausting it, he cut a ditch between the field and avenue to in- 

 tercept the roots. But he saw with surprise those of the roots which 

 had not been cut, go down behind the slope of the ditch to keep out of 

 the light, go under the ditch, and into the field again." And the Swiss 

 naturalist Bonnet said wittily, apropos of a wonder of this sort, "that 

 sometimes it was difiicult to distinguish a cat from a rosebush." 



