416 



Notes on the Influence 



[No'. 36, 



violet and of most gramineous plants. In the spring you may 

 perceive tlie young tufts of the latter raising themselves up 

 towards heaven like claws to catch the drops, especially when it 

 begins to rain : but most of the plants of the plains lose the gut- 

 ter as they expand. It was given them only for the season neces- 

 saiy to their gi-owth. It is permanent only in the plants of the 

 moimtains. It is scooped out as I have observed on the stalks of 

 leaves, and in trees conducts the rain water from the leaf to the 

 branch ; the branch by the obliquity of its position conveys it to 

 the trunk whence it descends to the root by a series of consequent 

 dispositions. If you pour water gently over those leaves of a 

 mountain shrub which are the most remote from its stem, you will 

 observe it run off by the track which I have indicated and not a 

 single drop w'iU fall to the ground. I had the curiosity to measure 

 in some mountain plants the inclination formed by their branches 

 with their stems and I found in a dozen diiferent species, as in the 

 fern, the thuia, and others, an angle of about thirty degrees. It 

 is exceedingly remarkable that this degree of incidence is the 

 same as that formed in a horizontal plane by the course of many 

 small rivers and rivulets, with the streams into which they dis- 

 charge themselves as may be ascertained upon the maps. This 

 degree of incidence seems to be the most favorable to the efflux of 

 various fluids which direct themselves towards a single line. The 

 same wisdom has regulated the level of branches in trees and the 

 course of rivulets in plains. This inclination is subject to some 

 varieties in several mountain trees. The cedar of Lebanon, for 

 example, shoots the lower parts of its branches towards heaven, 

 and bends the extremity downward toward the earth. They have 

 the attitude of command which is suitable to the king of vegeta- 

 bles, that of an uplifted arm, the hand of which is inclined. By 

 means of the first disposition the rain water is conveyed towards 

 the trunk, and the second the snows, in the regions of which it 

 delights glide from its foliage. Its cones have likewise two differ- 

 ent positions, for it first bends them towards the ground, to shelter 

 them at the season of flowering ; but Avhen they are fecundated it 

 raises them up towards heaven. The truth of these observations 

 may be confirmed by a young and beautiful cedar in the garden of 

 plants at Paris, which though an exotic has preserved in our climate 

 the attitude of a king^ and the costume of Lebanon. 



