Queries and Answers, 463 



enquirer, will ultimately tend to the advancement of the science and the 

 practical improvement of gardeners; as every doubt that is expressed, and 

 every query that is proposed for solution, will arouse our mental capacities, 

 and teach us to examine, observe, and experiment for ourselves. Far rather 

 would I seek after truth amidst diversity of sentiment, arising from investi- 

 gation, than witness a unity of opinion arising from ignorance, or from think- 

 ing beings tamely submitting their judgments to some established authority. 

 Hence the importance of such queries and statements as those proposed by 

 your correspondent J. D. P. (p. 295.), in relation to the absorbing qualities 

 of the roots of plants ; upon which I beg leave to offer a few remarks, which, 

 without positively denying, in all cases, the absorbing qualities of the large 

 roots, will tend to show that the evidence adduced by your correspondent 

 fails to satisfactorily establish generally such a proposition. I say generally, 

 because I doubt if there are any principles in the science of phytology that 

 can be laid down as universal, like a mathematical axiom : all we can do is to 

 form, from practice and observation, general inferences, from which there are, 

 or may be, exceptions, arising from the great diversity of habits, &c, which 

 exist among different plants, and even among those of the same species when 

 placed in different circumstances. The change effected by soil and situation 

 is frequently so great, that it becomes difficult to identify a plant as belonging 

 to its proper species. I have somewhere read that Sir J. E. Smith found the 

 Jlopecurus geniculatus, which generally has a fibrous creeping root, furnished 

 with an ovate juicy bulb on the top of a dry wall. Thus the fact alluded to 

 by your correspondent, allowing it to be generally correct, that plants, having 

 large roots with few fibres, make the most luxuriant shoots, fails to support 

 the hypothesis of the generally absorbing quality of the body of the root, inas- 

 much as no allusion is made to the circumstances in which the plants were 

 placed between which the comparison was made, nor yet to the size of the 

 spongelets ; though these relative circumstances I conceive to be of much 

 importance in determining the point. In a root possessing comparatively but 

 few fibres, I have observed the spongioles to be as large as the quill end of a 

 crow's feather ; while in some with many fibres, the spongioles were so small as 

 not to be easily distinguished. Thus, although embracing the spongiole 

 system, we are not under the necessity of admitting that the plant possessing 

 the greatest number of fibres will grow the most luxuriantly; since we know 

 that a dense mass of fibres is frequently occasioned by an obstruction to the 

 elongation of the root, or from the plant being situated in circumstances so 

 unfavourable, that, to maintain itself in existence, it puts in exercise a wonderful 

 accommodating principle, and, by multiplying its feeding or absorbing organs, 

 accomplishes that which, by a few spongioles, however large, could not have 

 been effected. 



Your correspondent farther asks, how the success of the vines he had 

 transplanted could be accounted for, " unless upon the supposition of the 

 nutriment-absorbing quality of the large roots, as all (?) the fibres had unavoid- 

 ably been destroyed." This, I consider, may be very easily accounted for, in 

 unison with the spongiole system, merely by viewing the large roots as reser- 

 voirs of nourishment; by which I do not mean, as is yet too generally supposed, 

 that, at the approach of winter, the sap descends and takes up its abode 

 in the roots ; what I mean is, that the root and every other living part of a 

 deciduous plant contain, even when exposed to the stormy blasts of winter, 

 a fluid which, if not flowing, is ready to be put in active motion by the genial 

 warmth of spring. It is this fluid, acted upon by heat, that supplies the swelling 

 and expanding bud; and, no sooner are the leaves unfolded to the agency of 

 light than they repay the obligation by transmitting downwards the elaborated 

 sap affording nourishment and increase to the plant; and, from the termi- 

 nating fibres of the roots, or from parts somewhat analogous to the latent 

 buds upon the stem, causing the protrusion of spongioles for the purpose of 

 supplying a constant necessary addition to that fluid in the plant, which other- 

 wise would soon become exhausted. I never met with an instance of a plant 



K K 2 



