LETTER XIII. 



139 



effectually to resist the agency of wind and storm. 

 This at least is manifestly the effect of the arrange- 

 ment, and is doubtless in part the intention of it. 



7. Other and more striking illustrations of the view 

 here taken of the nature of the woody layers and 

 their constituent fibres, are furnished by such trees as 

 assume a columnar disposition in the bole or trunk, — 

 and of which we have examples in the Thorn, the 

 Lombardy Poplar, the Birch, the Beech, but perhaps 

 best of all in the Yew. Look at the wood-cut facing 

 you. It is the portrait of an old Yew-tree standing 

 by a Church, — a locality in which such Yews are 

 oftenest to be met with — not, by the way, that they 

 were originally planted near Churches, but because 

 in the olden time Churches were often planted near 

 them. What, let me ask, strikes you most on looking 

 at the trunk of this tree ? Is it not that it consists of 

 one entire mass of roots — the several bundles being 

 most curiously plaited together, and inextricably 

 interwoven ? 



8. There is a singular fact mentioned by Mr Jesse 

 respecting the Thorn, which may be regarded as an 

 extreme degree of the grouping which is so manifest 

 in that Yew, and which goes far to demonstrate the 

 actual identity between the " trunk'' and the root" 

 of trees. You may remember that in one of my 

 earlier letters I remarked, that, however the woody 

 fibres may keep together in the trunk, and give to 



