THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. I07 



oak. And if we look at the crest of one of the undulations, that 

 twenty annual rings of growth are requisite to form, twenty more 

 years having to elapse before the rhythmical depression of the curve 

 line is produced, the patient and unostentatious carrying out of pur- 

 pose here evinced can scarcely fail to give rise to emotions in one's 

 mind akin to the reverential. For do we not see the workings of a 

 principle, or a beneficent, conserving energy, to which the ampli- 

 tudes of space and time are but toys ? 



Most of the large oak trees illustrate what has been written 

 about as the spiral tendency of all vegetation. Many have the twist 

 in the direction of the sun's motion from east to west, and then the 

 spiral becomes more pronounced as the trunk ascends. But some- 

 times the spirals run up the tree in the opposite direction, from west 

 to east, and then, as a rule, the spiral tendency diminishes towards 

 the tree top, this being the reported opinion of woodcutters and 

 foresters in this country. 



The sap, in ascending, seems to tend to the same vortical 

 motion as an upper eddy of wind or a waterspout. The uprising 

 sap seems to move by pulsations or throbs, and like all moving 

 liquids seems to flow easiest in undulatory lines. In many trees the 

 undulations are external deviations, or crossings of the perpendicu- 

 lar line of ascent, as if in hesitancy which spiral course to follow. 

 There seems to be a centripetal tendency in the spiral growths, and 

 the trees with twisted trunks, which have usually numerous, but not 

 very large branches proportionately. Those that have straight 

 grained stems, and which can, most of them, be split with ease, are 

 generally bifurcated near the top of the trunk into two very large 

 branches, which with their sub-branches form the tree top, and in 

 these the centrifugal tendency seems to have preponderated. 



Curious woodlike malformations are sometimes formed about 

 the roots of beech trees, which have assumed fantastic forms. In 

 several instances the flattened masses, in their foldings and size, bore 

 a striking resemblance to a mass of eviscerated animal entrails, with 

 all the imitations of the mesenteric puckerings. These accretions 

 first seemed to be a sort of ligneous fungi, but they were covered 

 with bark similar to the trees at whose base they had grown, and 

 consisted interiorly of a hardish grey substance, somewhat softer 



