132 PROSERPINA. 



I collect, however, in my thoughts, what I have 

 learned thus far. 



13. A tree stein, it seems, is a growing thing, cracked 

 outside, because its skin won't stretch, paralysed inside, 

 because its marrow won't grow, but which continues the 

 process of its life somehow, by knitted nerves without 

 any nervous energy in them, protected by spiral springs 

 without any spring in them. 



Stay I am going too fast. That coiling is perhaps 

 prepared for some kind of uncoiling; and I will try if I 

 can't learn something about it from some other book 



O 



noticing, as I pause to think where to look, the advan- 

 tage of our English tongue in its pithy Saxon word, 

 ' pith,' separating all our ideas of vegetable structure 

 clearly from animal ; while the poor Latin and French 

 must use the entirely inaccurate words 'medulla' and 

 'moelle'; all, however, concurring in their recognition 

 of a vital power of sofne essential kind in this white cord 

 of cells: "Medulla, sive ilia vitalis anima est, ante se 

 tendit, longitudinem impellens." (Pliny, ' Of the Yine,' 

 liber X., cap. xxi.) 'Yitalis anima' yes that I ac- 

 cept; but 'longitudinem impellens,' I pause at; being 

 not at all clear, yet, myself, about any impulsive power 

 in the pith.* 



line from bottom of p. 46; while Figure 45 is to me totally unintelli- 

 gible, this being, as far as can be made out by the lettering, a section 

 of a tree stem which has its marrow on the outside ! 



* " Try a bit of rhubarb" (says A, who sends me a pretty drawing 



