Phil Robinson

Name: Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree
Author: Phil Robinson

Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

Summary

“Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree”, published in 1882, is a work by Phil Robinson. It explores elements such as boughs, Otona and vegetable.

Quotes from Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (Phil Robinson)

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ This awful plant, that rears its splendid death-shade in the central solitude of a Nubian fern forest, sickens by its unwholesome humors all vegetation from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in the terror of the chase, or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of its boughs; upon the birds that, flitting across the open space, come within the charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the cups of its great waxen flowers ”

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Source: Wikisource

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ The vegetable world, however, has its revenges. You may keep the guineapig in a hutch, but how will you pet the basilisk? The little sensitive plant in your garden amuses your children (who will find pleasure also in seeing cockchafers spin round on a pin) , but how could you transplant a vegetable that seizes the running deer, strikes down the passing bird, and once taking hold of him, sucks the carcass of man himself, till his matter becomes as vague as his mind, and all his animate capabilities cannot snatch him from the terrible embrace of — God help him! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ It was quite dead; for as we came up a great-billed bird with gaudy plumage that had been securely feasting on the decaying fruit, flew up from the wreck. We removed the rotting foliage, and there among the dead leaves still limp with juices, and piled round the roots, we found the ghastly relics of many former meals, and — its last nourishment — the corpse of little Otona. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ At each discharge the terrible vegetable yielded a life. Piecemeal I attacked it, killing here a leaf and there a branch. My fury increased with the slaughter till, when my ammunition was exhausted, the splendid giant was left a wreck — as if some hurricane had torn through it. On the ground lay heaped together the fragments, struggling, rising and falling, gasping. Over them drooped in dying languor a few stricken boughs, while upright in the midst stood, dripping at every joint, the glistening trunk. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ The tree, again, to starve off its vampire parasite, withdraws its juices into its roots, and piercing the ground in some new place, turns the current of its sap into other growths. The epiphyte then drops off the dead boughs on to the fresh green sprouts springing from the ground beneath it, — and so the fight goes on. Again, look at the Indian peepul tree; in what does the fierce yearning of its roots towards the distant well differ from the sad struggling of the camel to the oasis, or of Sennacherib’s army to the saving Nile?
“Is the sensitive plant unconscious! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ Placing supreme Wisdom and supreme Unwisdom at the two extremes, and myself in the exact mean between them, I am surprised to find that, whether I travel towards the one extreme or the other, the credulity of those I meet increases. To put it as a paradox — whether a man be foolisher or wiser than I am, he is more credulous. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Phil Robinson, Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (1882)

“ Denying the fixity of all the laws of nature except one, that the stronger shall endeavor to consume the weaker, and holding even this fixity to be itself only a means to a greater general changefulness, he argued that — since any partial distribution of the faculty of self-defence would presume an unworthy partiality in the Creator, and since the sensual instincts of beast and vegetable are manifestly analogous — the world must be as percipient as sentient throughout. ”

Phil Robinson

Summary

Quotes from Under the Sun — The Man-Eating Tree (Phil Robinson)

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