CLIMBING THE HEDGEROW 17 



mounts them often by sheer impetus. The speed is curiously 

 little affected by weather, and few plants are truer to date. 

 Why this is so, any one will know who has attempted to 

 translate a white bryony. For the sake of observation the 

 writer transplanted some from hedgerow plants to his garden, 

 and a very difficult task it was. The root stock is buried 

 deep, and it consists of an almost formless mass, a white 

 rather marrow-like tuber consisting wholly of food. From 

 this the bryony grows without heed of outer circumstance. 

 If some moralist is in search of a good illustration of the 

 causes of success in life he might make good use of the 

 bryony. This rapid progress to higher things is not, as it 

 appears, sudden and unexpected. It is the direct result 

 of years of storing. The preparations have been long 

 made : all is ready ; and at the signal, at the touch of the 

 summer sun, the stored power is expressed, the capacity 

 proved. 



There are seductive illustrations too in the clematis, the 

 lustiest of all the climbers, which is said to be increasing beyond 

 all measure throughout England. We notice the clematis 

 most when it is best described by its nickname of ' old-man's- 

 beard ' ; but it is best worth watching in summer. The 

 leaf-stems and leaves have more than one curious device. 

 They delight, as the moralist said, 



' To rise on stepping-stones 

 Of their dead selves to higher things.' 



The green stems of last year look, till a late date in spring, 

 as if they were stone-dead, withered to nothing. Even to 

 the touch they seem dead. You may say of them, as was 

 said in another reference, that they are 'generally shamming 

 when they're dead.' But they are, as one may say, treated 

 as defunct by the growing shoots. They are made to serve 



