124 TWO INSTANCES OP TENACITY OP VEGETABLE LIFE. 



extraordinarily dry and sunny the first half of last summer was. 

 Yet, in spite of drought and sun, the leaves never flagged for 

 months. Nearly or quite to midsummer they held out bravely. 

 About that time, however, the vitality of the stem seemed to be 

 used up. 



We now take up a case of shrubs rooted in a wall. Here 

 again it is only an extreme case of an every day phenomenon which 

 is brought forward. All will think of wall-flowers on masonry, 

 especially on old ruins, as Dundrennan Abbey, golden with the 

 wild sort. And there are Pellitory, Wall-rue, and the " denizen " 

 Antirrhinum, which are not happy anywhere but on a wall. And, 

 apart from such naturally wall-dwelling plants, there are often seen 

 shrubs, and even trees, strange to the eye from their dwelling 

 place. There are brambles on the top of Whitcombe tower, an 

 elder on Colliton Park wall, and many such instances ; as well as 

 rock-rooted trees. 



Of these there can be few more abundant examples than about 

 the great sand-stone cliffs of Saxon Switzerland, which are decked 

 with many firs clinging to most unlikely crevices of the rock. But 

 in all these cases it seems just possible to divine how the roots find 

 moisture, little though it be. A good view of the way in which 

 rock-rooted trees do it was observed in Tynedale last autumn. A 

 Scotch fir is there growing on a small rock. Part of this had lately 

 fallen away, and so the course of the roots was shown. The way 

 in which they zigzagged through the horizontal stratification-fissures 

 and the vertical cleavage-fissures was very curious. But the shrubs 

 now to be spoken of seem to show an energy of life beyond any of 

 these trees. Close by us here, in South Street, is Greyhound Yard, 

 approached by the good Tudor arch replaced there at the suggestion 

 of Mr. T. Hardy. In 1890 the houses in the yard were repaired. 

 A white jessamine grew against the junction of two of these houses. 

 Of course, the jessamine was destroyed at least it seemed so. 

 But either the next year, or the year after, jessamine shoots 

 appeared. One grew out of a small crevice at the joining of the 

 houses ) the other out of a joint between two stones close by. 



