THE IVY. 3843 
though it cannot rise unless it clings to upright 
forms, with such support it makes, from a goodly 
stem, a mass of foliage not unworthy to rank with 
the spreading wealth of Tree verdure. And what 
the Ivy takes from its supporters, it often returns 
a thousandfold. For what is dead strength com- 
pared with life? What the bleak, rocky mass, 
the immovable rampart, or the giant Tree-trunk 
firm in death, compared with the charm of 
mantling greenery? If the creeping, glossy 
evergreen borrows the support of these objects, 
it covers them with its fresh life. And with 
kindness to man Nature lends her Ivy wreath to 
give beauty even to the crumbling ruins of his 
walls. 
The Ivy is inconstant in its moods, and change- 
ful in the hue and in the size of its leaves. A 
stem of varying lengths, often purple tinged, 
gives origin at its apex to the cellular expansion of 
the evergreen leaf, the stem entering the latter, 
where a deep depression in mid-leaf causes a bay 
in the contour line of the under margin. The 
leafstalk, where it enters the three or five-lobed 
leaf, gives origin to veins, which vary in number 
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