ulb. And this is the way nature plants bulbs.

In a similar manner young slender roots well anchored in the soil,
at or near the close of the growing season, pull downward and outward
large numbers of bulblets that form around a parent bulb of some kinds
of leeks, tulips, star-of-bethlehem, globe hyacinth, and monkshood.
The pull of the roots is much greater to one side than downward,
because most of the longest roots extend sidewise. Marilaun reports
that a certain lawn in Vienna was mown so frequently that tulips could
not go to seed, but after twenty years, from a very few bulbs planted
near each other, a space twenty paces in diameter was well covered
by tulips. And this is one way tulips travel, slow and sure.

5. Roots hold plants erect like ropes to a mast.--Did you ever lift
vines of cucumbers, squashes, and the like, where they had rooted
at the joints, and observe how forlorn they looked after the operation,
with leaves tipped over, unable to remain erect? While growing, the
stem zigzags or winds about more or less, and thus enables it to hold
the leaves erect; besides, the tendrils catch on to weeds and curl
up tight, and the roots at the joints are drawn taut on each side
after the manner mentioned above, and act like ropes to a mast to
hold the stem in its place, and thus help to hold the leaf above erect.

6. How oaks creep about and multiply.--Oaks come from acorns;
everybody knows that. The nuts are produced in abundance, and those
of the white oak send out pretty good tap roots on the same year they
fall. Some of the nuts roll down the knoll or are carried about by
squirrels or birds, as mentioned elsewhere. Let me tell you one thing
that I discovered the white oaks were doing in the sand of the
Jack-pine plains of Michigan. In dry weather the dead grass, sticks,
and logs are often burned, which kills much or all that is growing
above ground. In this way little maples, ashes, witch-hazels, willows,
huckleberries, blackberries, sweet ferns, service berries, aspens,
oaks, and others are often killed back, but afterward sprout up again
and again, and, after repeated burnings, form each a large rough mass
popularly known as a _grub_. The grubs of the oak are well known;
the large ones weighing from 75 to 100 pounds each. To plow land where
grubs abound requires a stout plow and several pairs of horses or
oxen.

A small white oak, after it has been many times killed to the ground,
dies in the middle and