fiorin or Agrostis alba, which abounds in these joints, 
affords so useful a winter food. 
The roots of shrubs contain the largest quantity 
of nourishing matter in the depth of winter 5 and the 
bulb in all plants possessing it, is the receptacle in 
which nourishment is hoarded up during winter. 
In annual plants the sap seems to be fully ex- 
hausted of all its nutritive matter by the production 
of flowers and seeds ; but if parts of annual plants, 
having leaves and buds, be detached and kept, so 
that they do not expend themselves by affording 
blossoms or seeds, the same individual life may be 
preserved through many years. It appears, there- 
fore, as Mr. Knight observes, to be habit only, not 
life, that is annual in such plants. 
When perennial grasses are cropped very close 
by feeding cattle late in autumn, it has been often 
observed by farmers, that they never rise vigor- 
ously in the spring ; and this is owing to the 
removal of that part of the stalk which would have 
afforded them concrete sap, their first nourish- 
ment. 
Ship-builders prefer for their purposes that kind 
of oak-timber afforded by trees that have had their 
bark stripped off in spring, and which have been 
cut in the autumn or winter following. The reason 
of the superiority of this timber is, that the concrete 
sap is expended in the spring in the sprouting 
of the leaf ; and the circulation being destroyed, 
it is not formed anew ; and the wood having its 
pores free from saccharine matter, is less liable to 
undergo fermentation from the action of moisture 
and air. 
