THE GREENWOOD TREE. 141 



Of course, when people see a wallflower rooted in the 

 clefts of some old church tower, they don't jump at once 

 to the inane conclusion that it is made of rock that it 

 derives its nourishment direct from the solid limestone ; 

 nor when they observe a barnacle hanging by its sucker 

 to a ship's hull, do they imagine it to draw up its food 

 incontinently from the copper bottom. But when they 

 see that familiar pride of our country, a British oak, with 

 its great underground buttresses spreading abroad through 

 the soil in every direction, they infer at once that the 

 buttresses are there, not as is really the case to 

 support it and uphold it, but to drink in nutriment from the 

 earth beneath, which is just about as capable of producing 

 oak-wood as the copper plate on the ship's hull is capable 

 of producing the flesh of a barnacle. Sundry familiar 

 facts about manuring and watering, to which I will return 

 later on, give a certain colour of reasonableness, it is true, 

 to this mistaken inference. But how mistaken it really 

 is for all that, a single and very familiar little experiment 

 will easily show one. 



Cut down that British oak with your Gladstonian axe ; 

 lop him of his branches ; divide him into logs ; pile him 

 up into a pyramid ; put a match to his base ; in short, 

 make a bonfire of him ; and what becomes of robust 

 majesty ? He is reduced to ashes, you say. Ah, yes, but 

 what proportion of him? Conduct your experiment 

 carefully on a small scale ; dry your wood well, and 

 weigh it before burning ; weigh your ash afterwards, and 

 what will you find ? Why, that the solid matter which 

 remains after the burning is a mere infinitesimal fraction 

 of the total weight : the greater part has gone off into 



