THE GREENWOOD TREE. 141 



Of course, when people see a wallflower rooted in the 

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

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

 clerives 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 tliat 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 



