122 HOURS WITH NATURE. 



ashwathwa has enough and to spare. In order, however, 

 they be able to understand what the nature of the food 

 and drink is, and how the tree takes them we must 

 begin at the beginning. 



Popularly speaking, our notion of an organised living 

 being is that it must have limbs to move about, mouth 

 to feed with, stomach to receive and digest food, eyes 

 to see, ears to hear, lungs to breathe, and so on ; or, 

 some modifications of the appendages and organs men- 

 tioned above. But in the ashwathwa we do not see any- 

 thing that can, even by a stretch of imagination, be 

 called limbs, mouth, stomach, lungs &c., or any modi- 

 fication of them. Nevertheless the act of eating, drink- 

 ing, breathing is incessantly going on there. How, we 

 shall presently see. Our previous acquaintance, how- 

 ever slight, with a vast multitude of sentient living 

 beings has taught us to see nothing strange or unusual 

 in infinite modifications of structures in living organisms 

 according to their modes of life and surrounding con- 

 ditions. Extending our observations a little further, 

 we find that the limbs which fit a cow^ a goat, or a 

 man for a terrestrial life, are modified into wings in 

 birds, which fly in the air, and into fins in the fish, 

 which swim in the water. This principle of modi- 

 fication of structure is carried further into effect in 

 the ashwathwa. For though an organised living being 

 in its highest development, the ashwathiva is in- 

 capable of voluntary motion. On the contrary it is 

 firmly fixed to the ground, so firmly that it is capable 



