ge underground life is that which is led by the organisms
we call trees! These great fluttering masses of leaves, stems, boughs,
trunks, are not the real trees. They live underground, and what we see
are nothing more nor less than their tails.

The Mistress dropped her teaspoon. Number Five looked at the Doctor,
whose face was very still and sober. The two Annexes giggled, or came
very near it.

Yes, a tree is an underground creature, with its tail in the air. All
its intelligence is in its roots. All the senses it has are in its
roots. Think what sagacity it shows in its search after food and drink!
Somehow or other, the rootlets, which are its tentacles, find out that
there is a brook at a moderate distance from the trunk of the tree,
and they make for it with all their might. They find every crack in the
rocks where there are a few grains of the nourishing substance they care
for, and insinuate themselves into its deepest recesses. When spring
and summer come, they let their tails grow, and delight in whisking them
about in the wind, or letting them be whisked about by it; for these
tails are poor passive things, with very little will of their own, and
bend in whatever direction the wind chooses to make them. The leaves
make a deal of noise whispering. I have sometimes thought I could
understand them, as they talk with each other, and that they seemed to
think they made the wind as they wagged forward and back. Remember what
I say. The next time you see a tree waving in the wind, recollect
that it is the tail of a great underground, many-armed, polypus-like
creature, which is as proud of its caudal appendage, especially in
summer-time, as a peacock of his gorgeous expanse of plumage.

Do you think there is anything so very odd about this idea? Once get
it well into your heads, and you will find it renders the landscape
wonderfully interesting. There are as many kinds of tree-tails as there
are of tails to dogs and other quadrupeds. Study them as Daddy Gilpin
studied them in his "Forest Scenery," but don't forget that they are
only the appendage of the underground vegetable polypus, the true
organism to which they belong.

He paused at this point, and we all drew long breaths, wondering what
was coming next. There was no denying it, the "cracked Teacup" was
clinking a little false,--so it seemed to the company. Yet, after all,
the fancy was not delirious,--the mind could follow it well enough; let
him go on.

Wh