368 THE UNIVERSE. 



be encircled with suitable soil, whilst the fine extremities 

 are scattered in the dry sand, the subject of the experiment 

 fades, languishes, and dies. 



An instinctive, irresistible power guides the root to its 

 goal. Nothing checks it ; to attain this it cleaves the rock, 

 traverses the water, and hangs and twists in a thousand 

 ways. 



A New England Acacia, which had become weakly and 

 languishing, after having exhausted the sterile soil in which 

 it was planted, at last driven to quench its thirst, threw out 

 one of its roots across a hollow of sixty-six feet, in order to 

 plunge it into a neighboring well, and spread out its fibres 

 in the midst of the water. From this time, according to 

 Malherbe, to whom we owe the story, the tree reared its 

 sinking boughs and blighted leafage, after which it grew 

 with marvellous rapidity. 1 



The banyan-tree, celebrated in India on account of the 

 veneration with which it is regarded, and of its strange as- 

 pect, is still more remarkable. From its powerful horizon- 

 tal boughs fall here and there fine aerial roots, like simple 

 filaments. These appendages sink slowly to the ground, as 

 if attracted thereby, and do not enlarge till they have sunk 

 into it. But everything changes as soon as they touch the 

 soil. These slender shoots then acquire a considerable in- 

 crease in size, forming all round the mother trunk a 

 splendid vegetable colonnade, the manifold pillars of which 

 uphold an imposing vault of verdure. The Brahmin some- 



1 Dr. Davy brought forward a case in which a horse-chestnut grew on a flat 

 stone, the roots passing for seven feet up a wall, then turning over the top of the 

 wall, and down again for seven feet to the earth. TR. 



