12 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



large and partly decayed log that reached many feet 

 out into the lake. The young tree was eight or 

 nine feet high ; it had sent its roots down into the 

 log and clasped it around on the outside, and had 

 apparently discovered that there was water instead 

 of soil immediately beneath it, and that its suste- 

 nance must be sought elsewhere and that quickly. 

 Accordingly it had started one large root, by far 

 the largest of all, for the shore along the top of the 

 log. This root, when I saw the tree, was six or 

 seven feet long, and had bridged more than half the 

 distance that separated the tree from the land. 



Was this a kind of intelligence? If the shore 

 had lain in the other direction, no doubt at all but 

 the root would have started for the other side. I 

 know a yellow pine that stands on the side of a 

 steep hill. To make its position more secure, it 

 has thrown out a large root at right angles with its 

 stem directly into the bank above it, which acts as 

 a stay or guy-rope. It was positively the best 

 thing the tree could do. The earth has washed 

 away so that the root where it leaves the tree is 

 two feet above the surface of the soil. 



Yet both these cases are easily explained, and 

 without attributing any power of choice, or act of 

 intelligent selection, to the trees. In the case of 

 the little hemlock upon the partly submerged log, 

 roots were probably thrown out equally in all direc- 

 tions; on all sides but one they reached the water 

 and stopped growing; the water checked them; but 

 on the land side, the root on the top of the log, not 



