THE OAK. 25 



the long petioles, and above all, tlie pleasing sense 

 of the stay and security which it affords, at every 

 season of the year these are present to the eye and 

 mind, and render a pilgrimage into the forest one 

 of those animating poems which nature is ever ready 

 to recite to us. Bracing up the old tree with its 

 friendly clamps, so far from being, as many suppose, 

 an enemy, ivy is in reality a protection ; and when 

 we see leafless and withered boughs rising above its 

 verdure, like gigantic antlers, it is not because of 

 the ivy, but from inanition. Still less is the ivy a 

 parasite, as often imagined. It is not even an 

 epiphyte. To be a parasite, a plant must send 

 suckers into the very substance of its victim, and 

 draw from it all that portion of its sustenance which 

 other plants are accustomed to derive from the soil 

 by means of roots. Ivy does not do this. Although 

 attaching itself to the bark of the tree by ten 

 thousand holdfasts, it has its roots in the earth below, 

 and from the earth it derives its nourishment ; and 

 if the stem be severed, it will die like any other 

 plant, unless, as has happened in some rare instances, 

 it can manage to sustain life by absorption from the 

 atmosphere. For this reason also, ivy is not, as we 

 say, even an epiphyte, an epiphyte being a plant 

 which simply rests upon the branch of another, just 

 as certain zoophytes cling to sea-shells. 



The oak is tenanted, not only by the ivy, but by 

 epiphytes and a parasite as well. The parasite is 



