230 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



wiry hooking apparatus of the bryony pointing its fine 

 tip at a neighbour it has discovered and wants to grip. 

 Take away that neighbour, and return a day or so later, 

 and the bryony's feeler will probably have altered its 

 aim, and be pointing towards some other bit of green. 



Attraction, repulsion these are forces at work 

 everywhere among green things at this season of 

 immense energy and power. The smaller plant or 

 the more backward plant is turning, writhing aside 

 and away from its neighbour that threatens, as it 

 spreads, to take up all the sun and air, and so the 

 food and breath. Here is repulsion ; I suspect that 

 almost every yard of green ground would show 

 repulsion. And then attraction the victim, luckless 

 loadstone, drawing to itself a climber that is cruel, 

 and with serpent coil may smother its support ; the 

 bindweeds often spoil the poor plants they twine 

 about with a terrible grip. 



The blind, but in the end sure, search of the bryony 

 trailer for support is one of the oddest sights I know 

 of. Sopping days and nights, followed by hot sun, 

 will give this bryony a great impetus. Yards of it 

 will shoot up and writhe and coil about the woodland 

 lane where a fortnight before not an inch showed 

 above the ground. The bryony trailer when bald of 

 leaves is one of those plants that wear an animal look. 

 In some of the climbers one is almost oppressed by 

 the look of half-consciousness, of a mind made up to 

 coil and spire to the fore and top of the hedge at the 



