treculia

[Named after M. Trécul, an eminent French vegetable anatomist.] Bot.: A genus of Artocarpacese. Senegal trees, having a globose fruit a foot or more in diameter, full of small elliptical nuts, with an eatable embryo. trěd'-dle, s . [TREADLE.] 1. The same as TREADLE (q. v.). 2. A prostitute, a strumpet. 3. ( Pl . ): Dung of sheep or of hares. *trede-foule, s . [Mid. Eng. trede tread, and foule fowl.] A treader of hens; a cock. tre-dille', *tra-dille', *tre-drille, subst. [Fr. trois; Lat. tres =three.] A game at cards played by three persons. "I was playing at eighteen-pence tredrille with the Duche of Newcastle and Lady Brown." - Walpole : Let ters , iii. 464. tree, *tre (pl. * treen , * tren , trees), s. [A. S. tred, treow a tree, dead wood, or timber; cogn. with Icel. tré ; Dan. træ ; Sw. trä =timber; träd =a tree; Goth. triu (gen it. triwis ) =a tree, a piece of wood; Ru . drevo =atree; Wel. derw =an oak; Ir. darag , darogan oak; Gr. drus =an oak, doru =a spears haft; Sansc. dru =wood.] IMG:content-1382.jpg:[blocks in formation] IMG:content-1383.png:[blocks in formation] II. Technically : 1. Bot .: Any woody plant rising from the ground, with a trunk, and perennial in duration; an arborescent plant as distinguished from a shrub, an undershrub, and an herb. The cla ification of plants which at first suggests itself as the most natural one is into trees, shrubs, and herbs. This is still the popular cla ification as it was that of the oldest observers (cf. 1 Kings iv. 33); but it violates all natural affinities, and has long since been abandoned by botanists. Trees occur in many orders, their stems varying in structure according to the sub-kingdoms to which they belong. They may be exogenous, or of that modification of the exogenous stem which exists in gymnogens, or may be endogenous or acrogenous. [ACROGEN, EXOGEN, ENDOGEN, GYMNOGEN. The age of certain trees, especially of Exogens, is often great, and, when cut down, the number of the years they have existed can be ascertained by counting the annual zones. Some of the giant cedars of California are more than a hundred feet in circumference, four hundred feet high and certainly 3,000 years old. Von Martius describes the trunks of certain locust-trees in Brazil as being eighty-four feet in circumference and sixty feet where the boles become cylindrical. From counting the annual rings of one, he formed the opinion that it was of about the age of Homer; another estimate increased the age to 4,104 years, but a third one made the tree first grow up 2,052 years from the publication of Martius' book (1820). A baobab-tree A dans on i a digit at a ) in Senegal was computed by Adanson, A. D. 1794, to be 5,150 years old; but he made his calculations from the measurement of only a fragment of the cro -section, and, as zones differ much in breadth, this method of computation involves considerable risk of error. Sir Joseph Hooker rejects the conclusion. Most trees are deciduous, i . e., have deciduous leaves, a few are evergreen. Το the latter kind belong those coniferous trees which form so conspicuous a feature in the higher temperate latitudes, while deciduous trees prevail in lower latitudes. The planting of trees is now more attended to than formerly, especially in cities and on the prairie-lands of the West. 2. Mechanical : A generic name for many wooden pieces in machines or structures, as (1) Vehicles: (a) The bar on which the horse or horses pull, as single, double, treble, whiffle, swingle trees. (6) The axle. Also known as axletree. (2) Harne : The frame for a saddle; a saddle tree, harne -tree, gig-tree. (3) Ship build .: A bar or beam in a ship, as che tree, cro -tree, rough-tree, trestle-tree, waste-tree (q. v.). (4) Mill .: The bar supporting a mill-spindle. (5) A vertical pipe in some pumps and air-engines. 3. Palæobot.: Parts of trunks of trees are often found almost as they grew in certain strata. [DIRTBED, FOREST, 3.] 1. At the top of the tree: Preeminent; having attained the highest position. 2. Boot -tree: [BOOT-TREE.] 3. Genealogical - tree: [GENEALOGICAL-TREE.] 4. Tree of Chastity: Bot.: Vitex agnus - cast us. [AGNUS-CASTUS.] 5. Tree of Heaven: Botany: The genus Ailanthus (q. v.), and spec. Ailanthus glandulosa. 6. Tree of Knowledge: Script .: A tree in the Garden of Eden, chosen as the test of obedience to our first parents in their state of innocence. Had they abstained from eating it, they would have known only good; eating it, they for the first time knew evil, and, by contrast, knew good more perfectly the moment that they lost it forever (Gen. ii. 9-17, iii. 1-24). Tradition makes the Scripture Tree of Knowledge a species of Tabernæmontana, but there is not the smallest atom of evidence on the subject. 7. Tree of Liberty : A tree planted by the people of a country to commemorate the achievement of their liberty, or the obtaining of some great acce ion to their liberties. Thus the Americans planted a tree of liberty to commemorate the establishment of their independence in 1789, and several were planted in Paris after the Revolution in 1848. 8. Tree of Life : (1) Script .: (a) A tree in the Garden of Eden, eating of which man would have lived forever (Gen. ii. 9, iii. 22); (b) a tree in the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. xxii. 2). 4169 (2) Bot.: The genus Thuja (q. v.). 9. Tree of Long Life: Bot.: Glaphyria nitid a. [GLAPHYRIA.] 10. Tree of Sadne : Bot.: Nyctanthes arbor- trist is . [NYCTANTHES.] 11. Tree of the Gods: Bot.: The genus Ailanthus (q. v.). 12. Tree of the Magicians : Bot.: A Chilian name for Lycioplesium pubiflorum , a shrub of the order Solanaceae, with red flowers. 13. Tree of the Sun : Bot .: A rendering of Hinoki, a Japanese name for Retinospora obtusa . So called because dedicated by them to the god of the sun. It is a tree belonging to the Cup res see. It rises to the height of eighty or ninety feet, with a straight trunk, having a diameter at the base of five feet, and yields a fine grained timber. Called also the Japanese Cypre . IMG:content-1384.png:[blocks in formation] tree-climber, s. Ichthy.: Anabas scandens, the Climbing Perch. Leut. Dindorf, of the Danish East India Company's Service, told Sir Joseph Banks that he had taken this fish from a moist cavity in the stem of a Palmyra palm growing near a lake. He saw it when already four feet above the ground struggling to ascend still higher-suspending itself by its gill covers, and bending its tail to the left, it fixed its anal fin in the cavity of the bark, and sought, by extending its body, to urge its way upward, and its . -tion, IMG:content-1385.png:[blocks in formation] march was only arrested when seized. Tennent ( Ceylon , i. 217) says: "The motive for climbing is not apparent, since water being close at hand it could not have gone for the sake of the moisture contained in the fi ures of the palm, nor could it be in search of food, as it lives not on fruit but on aquatic insects. The descent, too, is a question of difficulty. The position of its fins and the spines on the gill-covers might a ist its journey upward, but the same apparatus would prove anything but a facility in steadying its journey downward. The probability is that the ascent which was witne ed by Dindorf was merely accidental, and ought not to be regarded as the habit of the animal." "In the Tamoule language it is called Paneiri, or Tree . climber." -Wood: Illus . Nat . Hist . , iii. 295 IMG:content-1386.jpg:[blocks in formation] Zool.: The genus Birgus (q. v.). , bench; ; tion, tree-creeper, s. Ornith.: Certhia familiar is , a slender bird, scarcely so large as a sparrow, with a long, curved, sharp-pointed bill, and stiff tail-feathers; plumage on upper surface shades of brown, wings barred with pale brown and black, and nearly all wing feathers tipped with white; under-surface silvery white, flanks and vent with a rufous tinge. Found generally in temperate climates where old wood prevails. It is an excellent climber, running rapidly by jerks in a spiral direction over the bark of trees, searching for small insects which lurk in the crevices, picking them out with its slender bill, occasionally varying its diet on the seeds of various conifers