THE INNER ORGANIZATION OF TREES. 53 



color, lias been examined ; so also, gum, sugar, resin, and 

 the other products of the cells. It has been ascertained 

 that starch passes into dextrin and sugar, which substances 

 are again transmuted into starch; but when we look at the 

 rich diversity of vegetable productions and find that the 

 most learned chemists and physiologists are compelled, 

 through pure ignorance, to speak in the most general 

 terms about the nature and order of these changes, we 

 cannot but feel how little the works of Mature are under- 

 stood. Look at the flowers in any garden ! What an end- 

 less variety of color, form, and fragrance ! Each variety of 

 leaf connected with the stem, including the pistils, stamens, 

 petals, sepals, and even the bracts, stipules, and bud-scales, 

 are doubtless formed with an especial reference to the ela- 

 boration of the sap into those final products by which the 

 plant is characterized ; yet, notwithstanding all that has 

 been written and said on the subject, it must be confessed 

 that we cannot, as yet, appreciate the perfection of the 

 machinery, or trace the progress of the raw material 

 through all its changes, until it reaches its final metamor- 

 phosis. In this respect, not only the tree, but the com- 

 monest weed is an interesting study ; it exemplifies the 

 laws of growth quite as much as the costly exotic in the 

 conservatory. The flowers and forest trees which cover 

 and adorn the earth, may be regarded as so many beau- 

 tiful living problems, which are everywhere presented to 

 us by the GREAT INTELLIGENCE for our solution. 



And now, reader, may I be permitted to lay before you 

 some reflections which appear to me to be suggested by 

 the facts advanced in the last two chapters. 



Be usefully employed, never be idle. This grand moral 

 lesson is taught us by every portion of the fabric of a tree. 

 Not only each goodly branch and vigorous shoot, each frail 

 and perishable leaf of the many thousands which have 

 passed forever away, but even the minutest and most in- 

 significant bract and bud-scale has contributed to the for- 

 mation of the tree. Some of the phytons \vere neither 

 green nor gorgeous in their apparel, their external appear- 



