242 FKAOMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



but a dozen. All these vibrations and subvibrations are t 

 crowded together into a bit of deal not more than a | 

 quarter of a square inch in section. Yet no note is I 

 lost. Each vibration asserts its individual rights ; and I 

 all are, at last, shaken forth into the air by a second i 

 sound-board, against which the distant end of the rod I 

 presses. Thought ends in amazement when it seeks I 

 to realise the motions of that rod as the music flows I 

 through it. I turn to my tree and observe its roots. I 

 its trunk, its branches, and its leaves. As the rod I 

 conveys the music, and yields it up to the distant air. j 

 so does the trunk convey the matter and the motion I 

 the shocks and pulses and other vital actions which I 

 eventually emerge in the umbrageous foliage of the 4 

 tree. I went some time ago through the greenhouse 1 

 of a friend. He had ferns from Ceylon, the branches ' 

 of which were in some cases not much thicker than an I 

 ordinary pin hard, smooth, and cylindrical often I 

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

 one of them the unsightly twig unlocked the exuberant I 

 beauty hidden within it, and broke forth into a mass of ] 

 fronds, almost large enough to fill the arms. We stand I 

 here upon a higher level of the wonderful : we are I 

 conscious of a music subtler than that of the piano, I 

 passing unheard through these tiny boughs, and issuing 1 

 in what Mr. Martineau would opulently call the ] 

 * clustered magnificence ' of the leaves. Does it lessen J 

 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 be sees with a wonder superadded. To me. 



