36 



THE FOOD OF TREES IS IMBIBED 



PT, II. 



Whether 

 . this is true 

 or not of 

 vital im- 

 portance 

 to trans- 

 planting. 



Ends of 

 roots to a 

 tree what 

 children 

 are to a . 

 common- 

 wealth. 



men of uncommon sense (I think, Senebier first) have 

 repeated these supposed facts one after the other, till 

 they have become acknowledged data, which vitiate 

 our physiological theories at their earliest source, in 

 regard to the first absorption of food by plants. 



Thus much in regard to vegetable physiology in 

 general. In regard to transplanting in particular, the 

 truth or falsehood of this fact is of every importance ; 

 since, if the life or death of a radish depended on the 

 extremity of its root, an argument might be drawn that 

 the life of other plants might depend on the extremities 

 of theirs. But when we find this assertion to be totally 

 devoid of foundation, — when we find the radish, 

 deprived of all the immature parts of its root, absorbing 

 nourishment for itself till it has replaced all its mutila- 

 tions of head and heel, — we shall have the less horror of 

 depriving our transplanted trees of their rootlets by 

 simple excision ; and we shall be the less apt to waste 

 labour in taking up long contused roots (from this 

 cause, almost sure to die) in, after all, the impossible 

 attempt to get at the terminating ideal spongioles or 

 capillary stomata^ which are names as handsome as 

 mingled Greek and Latin can make them, but vox et 

 prceterea nihil. 



As long as the root is unripe, — -in other words, 

 unwoody, — it is wholly useless ; that is, it has no up- 

 ward conduit for the sap. The small fibres of the root 

 bear the same relation to a tree as children to a 

 commonwealth. So far from being a present source of 



