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70 
—many other plants are of such a structure as 
to admit of its being deposited only near the 
ground, or in what we commonly call the root; 
and it is for the sake of this reservoir of nourish- 
ment that the farmer cultivates many crops in 
his fields. Just as he keeps bees in his garden, 
for the sake of the honey which they store up 
for the winter season, he keeps turnips, carrots, 
mangold-worzel, parsnips, and all his root crops, 
which have the foliage growing out of their mass 
in his fields, for the sake of the nourishment 
which they store up for the fructifying season. 
It will be seen, then, how much the value of 
such a crop depends on its obtaining from the 
soil a plentiful supply of nourishment; and since 
it is not deposited until the sap has been elabo- 
rated by the leaves, it is equally evident how 
conducive a healthy foliage, warmth, sunshine, 
and whatever is necessary to their healthy ac- 
tion, is to the formation of a good root. The 
same view enables us to understand the loss of 
value which a root sustains when the plant is 
allowed to run to seed. The nourishment is 
stored up chiefly for consumption at this critical 
period, when an exhausted soil, and an advanced 
season, seem to render precarious the accomplish- 
ment of that object which nature is at all times 
fully bent to perform, before the death of the in- 
dividual. By this beautiful provision, however, 
the process of fructification goes on almost inde- 
pendent of accidental circumstances, and even 
though the plant be torn out of the soil; but, 
when this all-important end is completed, he 
who would now seek for nourishment in the 
root, will find only a husk. - Nature is liberal in 
this, that she makes use of unconscious beings to 
procure food for sentient beings; but, if these 
sentient beings do not take the food when it is 
offered them, so great is her economy that she 
will cause the unconscious ones to devour it, 
that nothing may be lost. Thus, it will be seen 
that both meat and morality may be extracted 
from a turnip.” 
ROPE. A series of small fibres united together 
by twisting or spinning, which unites the fibres 
together, thus causing them all to act at the 
same time, and thereby increases the general 
strength ; for if one fibre is weaker than another, 
or weaker in one part of its length than in ano- 
ther, it derives strength and support from the 
other fibres that are contiguous to it. On exa- 
mining the different fibrous materials in common 
use according to their diameters, silk is decidedly 
the strongest, and flax, hemp, cotton, and other 
vegetable matters follow in succession. Silk and 
flax are too expensive to be used on a large 
scale, and cotton is too weak ; therefore hemp is 
the material generally resorted to in Hurope for 
making ropes; but different countries adopt 
such materials as are most convenient to them- 
selves. Accordingly all the ropes that are used 
in South America and Mexico are made from the 
fibres of the aloe. The rigging and ropes of the 
ROPE. 
native East India shipping are made from the 
fibrous external coat of the cocoa nut. A great 
deal of the rope used in the United States is 
called grass rope, which is believed to be the fibre 
of the yucca. In fact, almost any tall vegetable 
that possesses great strength of fibre, may be 
manufactured into ropes. The Society for the 
Encouragement of Arts, &c. in London, have 
paid particular attention to this subject, and by 
consulting the different annual volumes of their 
Transactions, it will be found that fine and strong 
thread and cloth may be obtained from the stems 
of the common stinging nettle and the bean, and 
that a coarse and strong material is yielded by 
the stalks of the hop plant, the bark of the lime 
tree, and several other vegetable productions. 
The value of these several materials depends, 
however, upon their strength and durability, 
and the changes that they undergo by being wet 
and dry, bent or straight, and under other casual 
circumstances; and after a fair trial and investi-’ 
gation of their several properties, good hemp ap- 
pears superior to all that have so far been ex- 
perimented upon. One of its valuable properties 
is that its strength is not impaired by sudden 
bending, while if the aloe or grass rope are so 
treated, as in tying a knot, they lose their strength 
very considerably, unless previously steeped in 
water ; and even then, are not so strong in the 
bent as in the straight parts. As hemp is the 
best known material, and has been more experi- 
mented upon than any other, we shall confine 
ourselves in the few observations to be made on 
this subject, to ropes of this material. 
When a number of small fibres are united together 
by the process of twisting or spinning, the thread so 
produced, whatever may be the material, is called a 
yarn. Yarns may be made large or small, according 
to the purpose they are intended for. ‘Thus all the 
varieties of sewing thread, however fine they may 
be, consist of at least two yarns spun or twisted to- 
gether. But for rope-making the yarn is much 
larger, and is generally about ¢th of an inch in diame- 
ter. In the British navy-yards, the size of hemp 
yarn is determined by its strength, for each separate 
yarn must be capable of supporting one hundred 
weight, and will therefore be a little more or less in 
diameter, according to the goodness of the hemp. A 
rope is composed of a number of these yarns, usually 
from 16 to 25, twisted together, and this in large 
ropes is called a strand Large ropes are never 
made immediately from the yarns, but by twisting 
two or more of these strands together. In the 
language of rope-makers, three strands united, 
form a hawser; but when four are used, the rope 
is called a shroud. A cable is the union of three 
hawsers or three shrouds, and this large process 
of spinning is called laying a rope. By unravel- 
ling the end of a rope, the number of its component 
yarns may be readily discovered and counted, and as 
each yarn should bear 1 cwt., it may seem that this 
would offer a ready means of ascertaining the strength 
of new ropes. But the very formation of a rope 
renders this impossible. If the fibres ran in right 
lined directions from end to end of the rope, it would 
give a near approximation to truth; but the twisting 
of the fibres together makes the action an oblique, 
instead of a direct one; and thus, as those fibres near 
the centre of the rope, take a much straighter di- 
