O U K C I X T R Y II M E 



support, falling over the low bushes, pulling itself to the top of 

 tall trees, and still unconquered waving its restless arms in the 

 summer winds, until the next friendly poplar welcomed it." 

 Small wonder that the Fairy Prince had difficulty in finding her! 



In Jack and the Beanstalk too without doubt the kudzu again ! 

 ' Jack took a piece of stick and made some holes in the ground 

 and put in the beans. At dawn he went into the garden. What 

 was his amazement to find the beans had grown up in the night 

 and climbed up and up till they covered the high cliff that sheltered 

 the cottage, and disappeared above it. The stalks had twined 

 and twisted themselves together till they formed quite a ladder. " 

 The kudzu is also like Antaeus, who every time he touched his 

 Mother Earth gained new strength; for at the axils of the leaves not 

 only do new stems start upwards, but if they touch the ground new 

 rootlets start downward, and so new plants are formed. It does 

 not rebel at training nor even at mutilation. I have carried it up 

 a pier underneath a trumpet vine, cutting off all its leaves until it 

 had attained a height of twenty feet, where I wished it to cover a 

 railing. Nothing loath, in four weeks it had covered fifty feet of 

 that railing. If a column in the pergola looks ragged or the vine 

 over it ripens early, lo, at a moment's notice the kudzu is ready 

 to come over and drape it. No child fears the dark more than 

 does this curious climber. It makes but one demand sunshine. 

 How it shrinks and shrivels on reaching a shady corner! The 



small inconspicuous bunches of pale lilac flowers resembling the 



170 



