tention of an inquiring and intelligent mind. Having delivered this
defiance, I shall now ask my readers to take another walk round my
garden, and examine the climbers which cover my walls, and listen to
my Treatise on Holdfasts, as I call those appendages of plants which
assist them in climbing.[3]

The very first specimen to which we come, is one of that very pretty
tribe the _Clematideae_, the _Clematis montana_, which is closely
covering a wall of ten feet high, and at least twenty in width, thence
throwing out its branches, extending itself over the adjacent wall of
the house, and occasionally sending a stray shoot or two to adorn my
neighbour's garden. Now, how do those slight, long stems, which
stretch, some of them twenty or thirty feet from the parent stalk,
support and arrange themselves so as to preserve a neat and ornamental
appearance without my having had the least trouble in training them?
If you gather one of those loose branches, you will see that it has no
tendril of any kind, or other apparent means of support; but this,
like all others of the clematideae or clematis tribe, possesses a power
of twisting the leaf-stalk round a wire, twig, or anything else that
comes in its way, so as to tie the plant to the support with as firm a
knot as could be made with a piece of string; and after thus
encircling the wire, it returns the leaf to its former position, with
the upper side outwards, exactly as it was before. Some of the
clematis tribe make this fulcrum from one part of the leaf-stalk, and
some from another. In that which we are examining, it is formed from
the lowest part next the main stalk of the plant. In the wild clematis
(_C. vitalba_)--that kind which runs so freely over hedges and
thickets in the southern counties, adorning the country in winter with
snowy tufts of feathers, formed by its seed-vessels--a part of the
stalk between two pair of the leaflets forms this twist; whilst in the
sweet-scented garden-clematis, other parts of the stem give the
support: but it is always by means of some portion or other of this
member, that plants of this tribe are sustained in their rapid and
extensive climbing. It is curious to observe what instinctive aptitude
to curve towards suitable objects, and towards them only, is exhibited
in the holdfasts of climbing-plants. They never bend towards a wall,
board, or other flat substance, when there is nothing to lay hold of;
but the moment they touch a suitable ob