242 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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 realise 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, 

 BO 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 cylindrical often 

 leafless for a foot or more. But at the end of every 

 one of them the unsightly twig unlocked the exuberant 

 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, 

 passing unheard through these tiny boughs, and issuing 

 in what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the 

 * clustered magnificence ' of the leaves. Does it lessen 

 my amazement to know that every cluster, and every 

 leaf their form and texture lie, like the music in the 

 rod, in the molecular structure of these apparently 

 insignificant stems ? Not so. Mr. Martineau weeps 

 for ' the beauty of the flower fading into a necessity.' 

 I care not whether it comes to me through necessity 

 or through freedom, my delight in it is all the same. 

 I see what he sees with a wonder superadded. To me, 



