Chap. I.] BY THE SURFACE OF THE ROOTS. 
41 
plant more accessible to drought, and less acces¬ 
sible to watering; while the roots of the older 
plant, when unfenced, are entirely denuded by 
cattle treading away the earth, and suffer both 
from gnawing and treading. Trees should be 
planted at the exact level which their roots are 
afterwards to pursue, and a pan made round 
them by a slightly raised rim. This saves time 
and water in irrigating them, while it prevents 
overflows from without, to which the cup system 
is liable. 
The roots of a wall-fruit tree form a horizontal 
semicircular fan, as the head forms a vertical 
semicircular fan; the roots being kept up by 
the bad soil, and kept down by the action of the 
spade. And on account of the lateral upward 
growth of roots, alluded to in another place, the 
older the fruit-tree the less deeply the spade 
should go over its roots. 
This is a long story; perhaps I ought to say 
digression. But I cannot pass over the belief in 
the spongioles and capillary stomata at the ends 
of roots, and that the food of plants is solely 
absorbed by them, as one of those speculative 
theories and pretty notions which our marvel- 
mongering nature is so prone to adopt, and so 
loth to part with. The notion pretends to the 
That roots 
absorb only by 
sponges or ca¬ 
pillary stomata 
at their ends a 
scientific vulgar 
error. 
