Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/179

 *[Footnote: enormous thickness of 30 to 37 (32 to 39 English) feet, in diameter measured near the ground. (Emerson, Report on the Forests, pp. 49 and 101). The roots present the striking phenomenon of woody excrescences which project from 3 to 4-1/2 feet above the earth, and are conical and rounded, and sometimes tabular. Travellers have compared these excrescences in places where they are very numerous to the grave tablets in a Jewish burying-ground. Auguste de St. Hilaire remarks with much acuteness:—"Ces excroissances du Cyprès chauve, ressemblant à des bornes, peuvent être regardées comme des exostoses, et comme elles vivent dans l'air, il s'en échapperoit sans doute des bourgeons adventifs, si la nature du tissu des plantes conifères ne s'opposoit au développement des germes cachés qui donnent naissance à ces sortes de bourgeons." (Morphologie végétale, p. 91). A singularly enduring power of vitality in the roots of trees of this family is shown by a phenomenon which has excited the attention of vegetable physiologists, and appears to be of only very rare occurrence in other dicotyledonous trees. The remaining stumps of White Pines which have been cut down continue for several years to make fresh layers of wood, and to increase in thickness, without putting forth new shoots, leaves, or branches. Göppert believes that this only takes place by means of root nourishment received by the stump from a neighbouring living tree of the same species; the roots of the living individual which has branches and leaves having become organically united with those of the cut tree by their having grown together. (Göppert, Beobachtungen über das sogenanute Umwallen]*