194 PARASITIC PLANTS. 
young plant alive for some time, but not enough so to 
add materially to its primitive development. If at this 
time a young plant be pulled from the earth, and laid 
upon its surface, or placed upon some other plant, it will 
live many days without attachment; and here we see a 
wise provision of nature, adapted to the peculiar circum- 
stances in the infancy of the plant. 
Generally, on the fourth or fifth day after the feeble 
seedling has been placed upon its guardian branch, it will 
make one turn around the stem, and the tubercles will 
immediately appear on the inner side of the twining part, 
and, after a few more days have passed, the work of ab- 
sorption will commence. These tubercles, as they grow 
quite near together along the stem, bear a superficial re- 
semblance to the feet of caterpillars. (See Fig. 1.) Under 
the microscope each one, in its early stages of develop- 
ment, appears to be composed of a circle of smaller promi- 
nences, which finally unite in forming one root or sucker. 
As the plant continues to twine, these papille rapidly 
multiply wherever the stem closely touches other living 
tissue, and they are found to unite readily even on other 
parts of its own stem; they often incipiently form along 
the inner side of the vine, when at a considerable distance 
from contact. After passing many of these papille un- 
der the microscope, we at last detected the manner of at- 
tachment and the character of the union. 
sacl me depression in the centre of the above-de- 
scribed circle of swollen cells, a very 
manifest horn-like process protrudes, 
IE- and inserts itself into the tissues of 
the fate aan and rapidly unites with it (Fig. 4)- 
Where. the supporting stem is succulent, this root plunges 
far beyond the cuticle, even into the very pith of the 
