the acorn, the) root and the seedring oak 15 
deep they grow? They are the long, muscular fingers 
of the tree, thrust down into the earth to hold the heavy 
trunk and branches when the fierce winds blow. A 
great oak tree stands on the hillside near my home. In 
winter when the north winds sweep the hill front I 
have seen that oak bend until I thought it must break 
and crash to its death, but those strong and loyal fingers 
gripping the earth beneath held it in safety. Some roots 
have been known to grow as deep as twenty feet into 
the ground. There is as much tree underground as 
there is above; woodsmen and foresters say you can 
measure the roots by the branches; that is, they say the 
roots extend below ground as far as the branches are 
spread above. This is not strictly true, but it is truth 
to say there is as much tree below ground as above, only 
below ground the roots are bunched together in a thick 
mass. 
Roots, as well as trunk and branches, put on a coat of 
bark. Did you ever try to pull up a tree, just a little, 
slender sapling? If you did, I believe you had a pretty 
hard pull before you decided you would just let that tree 
stand after all. Some roots are so tough and strong that 
our forefathers made fences of them after they had 
pulled up the stumps to clear the land for tillage. In 
New England you can see to this day fences built more 
than a hundred years ago of stout white pine roots. 
