The Root of the Matter by Grant Allen — Read

EVERY Girton girl (_vice_ Macaulay's schoolboy, retired from overwork)-every Girton girl knows that a well-conducted British oak "spreads its roots as far and wide through the soil beneath as it rears its boughs above toward the air of heaven. " Every Girton girl is probably also of opinion that the British oak does this mainly or solely in order to fix itself by firm anchors in the soil-to withstand the battling winds and the constant pull of hostile gravitation. But what every Girton girl does not, perhaps, quite so confidently know is this-that, on the whole, the tips of the roots and the tips of the branches correspond roughly in situation with one another, so that if you were to unearth and expose the entire tree you would find it composed of two tolerably similar domes or hemispheres-one erect and aërial, and one inverted and earth-bound, each occupying approximately equal areas, and each circumscribed by fairly equal circles.

Why should this be so? It is clear enough, of course, that in order to fasten a big tree firmly in the ground, it must have numerous large and strong foundations. But wherefore this approximate equality in the areas occupied by roots and frondage? The answer is, because every large tree forms a sort of umbrella, a domed roof or catchment basin for the rain that falls upon it; and it has always its own peculiar and admirably adapted arrangement for conducting all the water it intercepts to certain special spots or drinking-places in the ground, where it sets the roots, and especially the rootlets, or absorbent terminals, intended to soak that water up and convey it to the branches.