194 PROSERPINA. 



connected by softer skin, below, as in fish and rep- 

 tiles, (divided with exquisite lustre and flexibility, 

 in feathers of birds) ; and lastly, true elastic skin, 

 extended in soft unison with the creature's growth, 

 — blushing with its blood, fading with its fear ; 

 breathing with its breath, and guarding its life 

 with sentinel beneficence of pain. 



6. It is notable, in this higher and lower range 

 of organic beauty, that the decoration, by pattern 

 and colour, which is almost universal in the pro- 

 tective coverings of the middle ranks of animals, 

 should be reserved in vegetables for the most 

 living part of them, the flower only : and that 

 among animals, few but the malignant and sense- 

 less are permitted, in the corrugation of their 

 armour, to resemble the half-dead trunk of the 

 tree, as they float beside it in the tropical river. 

 I must, however, leave the scale patterns of the 

 palms and other inlaid tropical stems for after- 

 examination, — content, at present, with the general 

 idea of the bark of an outlaid tree as the suc- 

 cessive accumulation of the annual protecting film, 

 rent into ravines of slowly increasing depth, and 

 coloured, like the rock, whose stability it begins 

 to emulate, with the grey or gold of clinging 

 lichen and embroidering moss. 



