More abundantly and luxuriantly than anything else had grown the poplar and bird cherry. The poplar starts from roots, and it is impossible to pull it up; but you have to cut the roots out of the ground.
Behind the pond stood a monstrous poplar, two spans in circumference. On all sides of it was a field, and this field was overgrown with young poplar shoots. I ordered the men to cut them down : I wanted to make the place more cheerful; but, above all, I wanted to make it easier for the old poplar, because I thought that all these young trees came from it and robbed it of sap.
As we were cutting down the young poplars, I some-times felt a pang of regret to see the roots full of sap hacked in pieces underground. Sometimes four of us tried to pull up the roots of some young poplar that had been cut down, and found it impossible. It would re-sist with all its might, and would not die. I said to myself :
“ Evidently it ought to live, if it clings so stoutly to life.”
But it was essential to cut them down; and I per-sisted in having them destroyed. But afterward, when it was too late, I learned that I ought not to have de-stroyed them.
I supposed that the saplings drew the sap from the old poplar, but it proved to be quite the reverse. By the time I had cut them down, the old poplar was also beginning to die. When it put forth leaves, I saw that one of its halves it grew in two great branches was bare, and that same summer it dried up. It had been long dying, and was conscious of it, and had been giving its life to its shoots.
That was the reason that they had grown so rapidly, and I, who had wished to help it, had killed all its children.
Chapter III
BIRD CHERRY TREE
A BIRD cherry l had taken root on the path through the hazelnut grove, and was beginning to choke off the hazel bushes.
For some time I queried whether to cut it or not to cut it; I felt sorry to do so. This bird cherry did not grow in a clump, but in a tree more than five inches l in diam-eter, and twenty-eight feet high, full of branches, bushy, and wholly covered with bright, white, fragrant blos-soms. The perfume from it was wafted a long distance.
I certainly should not have cut it down, but one of the workmen I had given him orders before to cut down every bird cherry began to fell it in my absence. When I came he had already cut halfway into it, and the sap was dripping down under the ax as he let it fall into the gash.
“ There ‘s no help for it,” I said to myself; “ evidently it is its fate.”
So I myself took the ax, and began to help the peasant cut it down.
It is delightful to work at all sorts of work; it is delightful even to cut wood. It is delightful to sink the ax deep in the wood, with a slanting stroke, and then to cut it in straight, and thus to advance deeper and deeper into the tree.
I entirely forgot about the bird cherry tree, and thought only about getting it cut down as quickly as possible.
When I got out of breath, I laid down the ax, and the peasant and I leaned against the tree, and tried to push it over. We pushed hard; the tree shook its foliage and sprinkled us with drops of dew, and strewed all around the white, fragrant petals of its blossoms.
At this instant something shrieked; there was a sharp, crackling sound in the center of the tree, and the tree began to fall.
It broke off near the gash, and, slowly wavering, toppled over on the grass, with all its leaves and blossoms. The branches and blossoms trembled for a moment after it fell, and then grew motionless.
“ Ekh ! what a splendid piece ! “ said the peasant; “it’s a real shame ! “
As for me, I felt so sorry that I hastened off to look after other work.
1 Three vershoks, 5.25 inches.
Chapter IV
HOW TREES WALK
ONCE we were clearing an overgrown path on the hillside, near the pond. We had cut down many briers, willows, and poplars, and at last we came to a bird cherry.
It was growing on the path itself, and it was so old and thick that it seemed as if it must have been there at least ten years. And yet I knew that only five years before the park had been cleared.
I could not understand how such a mature cherry tree could have sprung up there.
We cut it down and went on. A little farther away, in another thicket, there was another bird cherry tree like the first, only even more dense.
I examined its root, and found that it sprang from under an old linden. The linden had been smothering it with its shade, and the cherry had run under the ground for a distance of a dozen feet, 1 with a straight stem; and when it came out into the light, it had raised its head and begun to flourish.
I cut it up by the root, and was amazed to see how light-colored and rotten the root was. After I had cut it off, the peasants and I tried to pull up the tree; but in spite of all our best efforts we could not stir it; it seemed to be fastened to the ground.
I said :
“ Look and see if we have not failed to cut it entirely off.”
One of the workmen crawled down under it, and cried :
“Yes, there ‘s another root; there it is under the path.”
I went to him, and found that this was the case.
The cherry tree, in order not to be choked off by the linden, had crept from under the linden to the path, seven feet from its original root. Then the root which I had cut off was rotten and dried up, but the new one was alive. It had evidently felt that it would not live under the linden, had stretched itself out, had taken hold of the soil with its branch, had made a root out of the branch, and then abandoned the old root.
Then I began to understand how the first bird cherry had grown up in the path. It had evidently done the same thing, but had succeeded in so thoroughly ridding itself of its old root that I could not find it.
Stories From Physics
Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole 1888
Chapter I
THE MAGNET
IN days of old there was a shepherd whose name was Magnis. One of Magnis’s sheep went astray. He went to the mountains to search for it.
He reached a spot where there were only bare rocks. As he walked over these rocks he began to be conscious that his boots were adhering to them. He felt of them with his hand; the rocks were dry, and did not stick to his hands. He started to walk on again; still his boots stuck fast.
He sat down, took off one of his boots, and holding it in his hands, began to touch the rocks with it.
When he touched them with the leather or the sole, it did not adhere; but when he touched them with the nails, then it adhered.
Magnis had a crook with an iron point. He touched the stones with the wood, it did not adhere; but when he touched it with the iron, it clung so powerfully that he had to pull it away by main force.
When Magnis examined the stone, he’ saw that it was like iron, and he carried some of the pieces of rock home with him. From that time they understood this stone, and called it lodestone, or magnet.
Magnets are found in the ground, together with iron ore. The best iron is found when the ore contains lodestone.
If a piece of iron is put on the magnet, then the iron also begins to attract other pieces of iron. And if a steel needle is laid on a magnet and kept there for some time, then the needle itself becomes a magnet, and is able to attract iron to itself.
If two magnets are laid side by side, two of the ends or poles will repel each other; the other two will attract each other. If a magnetic needle be broken in two, then again each half will attract at one pole and repel at the other. And if it be broken again, the same thing will happen; and no matter how many times it is broken, it will be always the same like poles repelling one another, unlike poles attracting one another; just as if the magnet pushed with one end and pulled with the other.
And, however often you break it, one pole will always push and the other draw.
It is exactly like a pine cone : no matter where it is broken off, one end is always convex, the other hollow. And if they are put end to end, the convex fits into the hollow; but the convex will not fit the convex, nor the cup the cup.
If a needle is magnetized by being left some time in contact with a magnet, and is balanced on a point in such a way that it will move freely on the point, then no matter in which direction the magnetic needle is turned, as soon as it is
