II. THE ROOT. 35 



treatise on agriculture ; all that I want you to 

 note here is that this feeding function of the 

 root is of a very delicate and discriminating kind, 

 needing much searching and mining among the 

 dust, to find what it wants. If it only wanted water, 

 it could get most of that by spreading in mere soft 

 senseless limbs, like sponge, as far, and as far down, 

 as it could ; but to get the salt out of the earth it 

 has to sift all the earth, and taste and touch every 

 grain of it that it can, with fine fibres. And there- 

 fore a root is not at all a merely passive sponge 

 or absorbing thing, but an infinitely subtle tongue, 

 or tasting and eating thing. That is why it is 

 always so fibrous and divided and entangled in 

 the clinging earth. 



9. " Always fibrous and divided " ? But many 

 roots are quite hard and solid ! 



No ; the active part of the root is always, I believe, 

 a fibre. But there is often a provident and passive 

 part — a savings bank of root — in which nourishment 

 is laid up for the plant, and which, though it may be 

 underground, is no more to be considered its real 

 root than the kernel of a seed is. When you sow 

 a pea, if you take it up in a day or two, you will 

 find the fibre below, which is root ; the shoot 

 above, which is plant ; and the pea as a now partly 

 exhausted storehouse, looking very woful, and like 



