256 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



the 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. Martineau 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 dis- 

 tant 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 event- 

 ually emerge in the umbrageous foliage of the tree. I 

 went some time ago through the greenhcusJ of a friend. 

 He had ferns from Ceylon, the branches of which were in 

 some cases not much thicker than an ordinary pin hard, 



