THE REV. JAMES MARTIN KAU. 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 ^natter " is implied in the concession! Think 

 of the acofn, 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 arn 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. Martineau himself. 



Consider it for a moment. There is an experiment, 

 first made by Wheatstoue, 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 



