TREES AND LANES 



43 



shelf and turning under and back at some vulnerable 

 spot, always searching for firm support. The ends of 

 the roots have travelled away, right and left, more than 

 thirty yards from the base of the tree, and their feeding 

 points are still more distant, rambling just under the 

 surface of the bank in search of the rather sparsQ 

 nutriment. 



A few miles away, where a road cuts through the 

 foot of a steep hill thickly clothed with Scotch Fir, the 

 same decay of the sandy soil is going on, and the Firs 

 at its extreme edge, evidently aware of their danger, 

 are providing against it in much the same manner, by 

 throwing down a thick columnar root. To the Scotch 

 Fir this constructive method seems to come even more 

 naturally than to the Beech, because it has a strong tap- 

 root, which easily adapts itself to the transformation into 

 true stem ; indeed, in one example it is difficult to believe 

 that the tree was not originally rooted at the lower 

 level ; the true roots that hold to the top of the bank 

 look almost out of place, and as if by some capricious 

 freak some branches had rooted into the edge of the 

 scarp. The transformation is all the more complete 

 in that tho converted root is clothed with a true bark 

 in all respects like that of the upper trunk, separating 

 when mature into the same upright scale-like plates. 



The hollow sandy lanes in my near neighbourhood 

 seem exactly fitted to demonstrate the ways and w^ants 

 and manner of rooting of all the different trees, and 

 the bright yellow sand makes one all the more enjoy 



