T11E REV. JAMES MARTINEA U. 525 
then if the power to build a tree be conceded to pure 
matter, what an amazing expansion of our notions of the 
" potency of matter " is implied in the concession! Think 
of tb.3 acorn, of the earth, and of the solar light and heat 
was ever such necromancy dreamed of as the production 
of that massive trunk, those swaying boughs and whisper- 
ing leaves, from the interaction of these three factors? 
In this interaction, moreover, consists what we call life. 
It will be seen that I am not in the least insensible to the 
wonder of the tree; nay, I should not be surprised if, in 
the presence of this wonder, I feel more perplexed and 
overwhelmed than Mr. Martiueau himself. 
Consider it for a moment. There is an experiment, 
first made by Wheatstone, where the music of a piano is 
transferred from its sound-board, through a thin wooden 
rod, across several silent rooms in succession, and poured 
out at a distance from the instrument. The strings of the 
piano vibrate, not singly, but ten at a time. Every string 
subdivides, yielding not one note, but a dozen. All these 
vibrations and subvibrations are crowded together into a 
bit of deal not more than a quarter of a square inch in 
section. Yet no note is lost. Each vibration asserts its 
individual rights; and all are, at last, shaken forth into 
the air by a second sound-board, against which the distant 
end of the rod presses. Thought ends in amazement when 
it seeks to realize the motions of that rod as the music 
flows through it. I turn to my tree and observe its roots, 
its trunk, its branches, and its leaves. As the rod conveys 
the music, and yields it up to the distant air, so does the 
trunk convey the matter and the- motion the shocks and 
pulses and other vital actions which eventually emerge in 
the umbrageous foliage of the tree. I went some time ago 
through the greenhouse of a friend. He had ferns from 
Ceylon, the branches of which were in some cases not much 
thicker than an ordinary pin hard, smooth, and cylin- 
drical often leafless for afoot or more. But at the end of 
every one of them the unsightly twig unlocked the exu- 
berant beauty hidden within it, and broke forth into a 
mass of fronds, almost large enough to fill the arms. We 
stand here upon a higher level of the wonderful: we are 
conscious of a music subtler than that of the piano, pass- 
ing unheard through these tiny boughs, and issuing in 
what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the " clustered 
