LEAF AND TENDRIL 



moss and moisture, and here the root makes its 

 way. When it reaches the edge of the rocks, it 

 bends down just as a fluid would do and continues 

 its course till it reaches the ground ; then it rejoices, 

 so to speak. All other roots are called in or dry 

 up, this one root increases till it is like a continua- 

 tion of the trunk itself, and a new root system is 

 established in the ground. But why we find the 

 birch more often established upon a rock than any 

 other tree, I do not yet know. 



I know of a little birch tree that is planted in the 

 niche on the face of an almost perpendicular rock 

 in the edge of the woods. There has been a tree, 

 probably a birch, in the same niche before it, and 

 in this mould of its ancestor the tree is planted. 

 It has wedged its roots into the rock wherever 

 there is a seam or crack, and it must have thriven 

 fairly well on its scant rations of soil for several 

 years, or until it became a sapling the size of one's 

 wrist. Then it started a root diagonally down the 

 face of the rock toward the ground, about four 

 feet distant. How that root made its way there 

 on that bare, smooth surface, where there is only 

 a thin wash of lichens, is a mystery. But it did, 

 and it reached the ground and is now the size of 

 a broom handle, and is doubtless the tree's main 

 source of sustenance. 



What prompted the tree to send it down, to 

 organize and equip this relief expedition to the soil 

 174 



