LETTER VI. 



53 



Fig. 10. 



ground. It is singular enough, however, although 

 quite in keeping with the account now given of the 

 Endogen, that in some sorts of Palms, as in the Pan- 

 danus^ or Screw Pine (Figure 10), those bundles 

 pierce through the trunk, 

 and become in the first in- 

 stance aerial roots ; and that 

 gradually pushing down into 

 the ground, apart and at 

 some little distance from the 

 trunk, they form props or 

 buttresses for its support. 



5. The fibres constituting 

 the roots of the individual 

 palm-plants undergo, I be- 

 lieve, no increase in length 

 or thickness after the year 

 they are formed ; and as 

 those which pass into the 

 ground proceed from a few 

 only of the earliest in the 

 series, the hold which the 



trunk of the Palm-tree has of the soil, when compared 

 with the height of the column, comes after a time to 

 be comparatively slight. I am, &c. 



