66 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



wonder about the sticky, brownish stuff that smears part of one side. 

 A needle would be a curiosity which he would often tell about. 



Hence a tour of a pine tree by a seven-inch person would be ten times 

 as interesting as if he kept his normal height. But even then he would see 

 no more than a pocket lens reveals. Suppose he were reduced to a hun- 

 dredth of his size, so that the needle was nearly seventy feet long and each 

 small saw-tooth became a spine growing from a lump. The whole tree 

 would be nearly two miles high. Then the idea of a "tour" of its roots and 

 branches would not seem a figure of speech. 



But even if the sights in a tree appeared a hundred times as large as they 

 now do, a tourist would not see much. The secrets of structure would still 

 be hidden. If we wish to get any proper view of them, we shall have to 

 reduce ourselves to a tenth of the hundredth of our actual height. This 

 needle, upon which you have rashly ventured with me, though it hung 

 only ten feet from the ground, is now nearly two miles above ground and 

 is long enough for a two-hundred-and-twenty-yard dash; the top of the 

 tree is seventeen miles above us. 



Here you are, two miles above the earth, swinging in the light wind 

 through an arc of five hundred feet. I will make you ten times smaller 

 still, and give you ten times more power of seeing. Now the ground has 

 become a vague, cloudy area twenty miles away; the needle is a mile and 

 a quarter long, and you are sitting on an edge of it that is more rugged than 

 the ridge of the Santa Ynex Mountains. 



Perhaps you think we are now prepared for the journey, but I assure 

 you that you will be disappointed if you set out in your present condition. 

 You can not see much. Look down ten feet to the nearest one of the gray 

 mounds that run in a row parallel to the edge where we are perched. It 

 is one of the spots that dot all the surface of the needle. Even in your present 

 smallness you see it as only two feet wide, and you can only make out a 

 mass of pulp and dirt and resin. Nothing is clearly defined. I will make 

 you ten times smaller still. Then, just for the sake of convenient arithmetic, 

 I will reduce you by a factor of 2.1. You are now one three-thousandth 

 of an inch tall. Twenty such creatures as you standing on each other's heads 

 in a column would reach as high as the thickness of the sheet of paper on 

 which you are reading. Do you think I overdo in making you ready to 

 see a tree? You will shortly be complaining that you are too big. 



Hold fast to this gummy hillock while I explain the scenery. We are 

 near the base of a needle, one of a cluster of five, and are facing toward the 

 base. Behind us is the tip of the needle, twenty-seven miles away. We are 

 on a resinous mountain ridge that is composed of the water-proof coating 

 of the needle. On our right is the wide, convex side of the needle, which is 

 three hundred fifty yards across; but we see only half of the width because 

 the other side is hidden below the slope. In color it is like a wilted lawn. 

 Its expanse is covered with gray hummocks that heave and gently writhe 



