THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 399 



little ones are joined; it seems a forest in the midst of a 

 forest. An Indian tradition tells that Alexander passed 

 near one of these gigantic trees which still exists by the 

 Nerbnddah. 



The aerial roots of the Clusia rosea produce different 

 results. The plant lets them drop from the top of the 

 palm-tree. At first, fragile and harmless, they twine 

 themselves innocently round the stems, but very shortly 

 they become welded together, and finding in the soil a 

 superabundance of vital matter, these roots form a thick 

 woody mantle, and their tortuous arms, compressing their 

 protector more and more, finish by fixing it in the middle 

 of an unyielding sheath so as to choke it. Hence the ac- 

 cursed fig-tree, for this is the common name of the ^^ara- 

 site, is the living symbol of ingratitude. 



De Candolle admits, without any circumlocution, that 

 absorption is an essentially vital phenomenon, and we 

 share in the most unqualified manner the opinion of the 

 greatest botanist of modern times, which was also that 

 of Sennebier, Saussure, and Desfontaines. 



To the suction of the spongiole, which ceases so soon 

 as life is extinguished, are accessorily joined some purely 

 physical forces, such as endosmosis, capillary attraction, 

 and hygroscopic action, which some naturalists have 

 erroneously looked upon as the special agents of it. 



The radicles seem to select instinctively from the 

 soil the food of the plant, which is scattered through it, 

 just as out of the midst of the nourishment which fills the 

 intestine in animals, the chyliferous vessels pump up only 

 the fluid Avhich is to regenerate the organism. Like the 

 latter, the spongioles of plants are sometimes deceived, and 

 introduce along with the sap some poison which kills them. 

 But absorption is so little left to the chemico-physical 



61 



