Proportion borne by Boots to Branches. 439 



the gardener, for the sake of a few beans, draws upon himself 

 an annoyance that he can hardly get rid of for the whole 

 summer. 



I tried another experiment with some plants of the same sort 

 of beans, that were growing in a pit in a hot-house, and had 

 been transplanted into a little mould on the tan in cross rows, 

 about 5 ft. from the glass, after they had done bearing a most 

 excellent crop. I cut these plants down to 1 in. above the seed 

 leaf, and watered them well. In about a fortnight they were in 

 full flower, and bore as good a crop as I have had from beans 

 that had been transplanted into pots, and that had taken three 

 times as long in coming in bearing. 



Broom House, Fnlham, June 20. 1834. 



Art. VIII. Short Communication. 



The Proportion borne by the Boots of a Tree to its Branches. — 

 Virgil's account of the iEsculus, 



" Quag, quantum vertice ad auras 



iEthereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit;'* 



" Which, as it high 



Uprears its head to heaven, so deep in root 



Shoots downwards to the centre;" Trapp's Trans. 



is generally regarded, I suppose, as a mere poetical hyperbole, 

 descriptive of a tree whose roots extend to a very great depth ; 

 and, as applied to a full-grown or large tree, it can be con- 

 sidered as no other. There are cases, however, of young seed- 

 ling trees, in which the poet's description, so far from exceeding, 

 does not, by a great deal, even come up to the truth. A few 

 weeks since, I got up a self-sown seedling oak, of this year's 

 growth, out of a wheat stubble : the plant above ground, which 

 was thriving and vigorous, was 4 in. high ; while the root below 

 (that is, the portion of it which I succeeded in getting up) mea- 

 sured 2 ft. 10^ in. Here, then, was a tree which far out-rooted 

 Virgil's iEsculus ; for its root below was more than eight times 

 the length of its stem above ; and, had the root been obtained 

 entire, it would probably have considerably exceeded the above 

 dimensions. I have known instances of oaks, of five or six or 

 more years' growth, whose roots have many times surpassed the 

 length of their stem and branches. Occasionally, indeed, these 

 trees appear to me to exhaust their efforts, for several years to- 

 gether, entirely on the growth downwards (" tantus amor 

 terras ! " so much do they love the earth), as if to make the 

 better provision for the future more rapid increase of the plant 

 above, which, for the time, will be almost at a stand-still. — W. 

 T.Bree. Allesley Bectory, Nov. 6. 1833. 



