48 



LETTERS ON TREES. 



Reaching the injured part of the trunk, they have 

 then found themselves naked and exposed, unsup- 

 ported, and unfettered also, by the cellular tissue ; 

 and thus circumstanced they have gathered round 

 them, each fibre for itself, or each little bundle for 

 itself, a thin coating of bark, and still pushing on, 

 some in mid-air, and some on broken pieces of the 

 trunk, have become and do now display themselves as 

 genuine and unmistakeable roots. Nor is it uninter- 

 esting to remark that the splintered wood, exposed for 

 many years to the full action of the weather, has 

 rotted; and that (soft, spongy, and friable) it has in the 

 course of time come to be mixed up with earth, wafted 

 to it as dust from the adjoining fields and road, 

 and so has formed a veritable soil everywhere per- 

 vaded by those roots. I am, &c. 



