56 PROSERPINA. 



to the sun in drying the winter's damp out of it 

 for us : then, with that strange vital power, — which 

 scientific people are usually as afraid of naming as 

 common people are afraid of naming Death, — the 

 tree gives the gathered earth and water a changed 

 existence ; and to this new-born liquid an upward 

 motion from the earth, as our blood has from 

 the heart; for the life of the tree is out of the 

 earth ; and this upward motion has a mechanical 

 power in pushing on the growth. "Forced onward 

 by the current of sap, the plumule ascends," 

 (Lindley, p. 132,) — this blood of the tree having to 

 supply, exactly as our own blood has, not only the 

 forming powers of substance, but a continual evapo- 

 ration, "approximately seventeen times more than 

 that of the human body," while the force of motion 

 in the sap " is sometimes five times greater than 

 that which impels the blood in the crural artery of 

 the horse." 



18. Hence generally, I think we may conclude 

 thus much, — that at every pore of its surface, under 

 ground and above, the plant in the spring absorbs 

 moisture, which instantly disperses itself through its 

 whole system " by means of some permeable quality 

 of the membranes of the cellular tissue invisible 

 to our eyes even by the most powerful glasses " 

 (p. 326); that in this way subjected to the vital 



