138 



LETTERS ON TREES. 



clear of them and then creeping round them ; often, 

 besides, without apparent reason, reyersing their 

 course, again returning upon themselves, and form- 

 ing chicles, or portions of circles, or duplications of 

 various sorts and shapes ; and after resuming their 

 usual oblique or spiral direction downwards, again 

 going through the like evolutions. 



6. Attentively examining such a piece of timber, 

 and observing that singular disposition — and as one 

 may say, those strange vagaries of the fibres, one 

 cannot help identifying those fibres with roots, or 

 regarding the whole as a mass of roots." Less free 

 to do so, they yet disport themselves as roots do. — I 

 have said that in many trees, the fibres run as a whole 

 in a spiral direction round the trunk — not in straight 

 lines downwards ; and there is this further peculiarity, 

 that individual sets of fibres which form part and 

 parcel of branches stretching in one direction — say 

 to the south, may often be traced, as they make their 

 way down, gradually to wind round the trunk and 

 pass under ground into a division of the root" which 

 strikes in a direction directly opposite. The final 

 cause of this is obvious enough, — the physical cause 

 probably beyond our reach. It looks as if the fibres 

 were actuated by a sort of instinct, and were led 

 thereby to arrange themselves in the manner best 

 adapted to enable the entire tree, or particular parts 

 of it, to sustain the superincumbent weight, and 



