152 NATURAL PLAY. 



been left after the other tribes have performed their 

 annual renovation, is the food of those singular 

 vegetables ; and whenever disease comes upon the 

 vegetable structure, and even when a certain stage 

 of corruption is arrived at in the animal, those cryp- 

 togamea, or plants of hidden production, fail not to 

 appear, and to perform their functions. Nor is there 

 the least doubt that those little things, and many of 

 them are probably as momentary in their duration 

 as they are minute in their size, are as faithful to 

 the decree of their kind, and that the mysterious 

 action in them, to which we give the name of vege- 

 table life, is as true to its temperature and its hu- 

 midity, and as strong against the resistance of 

 merely dead matter, as in the most stately oaks of 

 England, or in those giant pines which wave their 

 spiry tops in mid-heaven on the western shores of 

 North America. 



The tendency of heat is, as has been said, always 

 to separate the particles of substances ; but it was 

 already mentioned that all of what we call "the 

 principles of things" admit of a certain play, or 

 have, as it were, an extent to which they can be bent 

 or driven, and yet recover themselves, if that which 

 bent or drove them is withdrawn. A bow is no 

 bad illustration here ; because the elasticity of the 

 bow is an instance of one of those very powers. 

 Now when the skilful archer bends his bow, it pulls 

 the string to a perfectly straight line ; then when he 

 grasps the bow with his left hand, sets the arrow 

 upon the string, holds the string on the fingers of his 

 right hand like hooks, that arm being doubled back 

 into that position in which it can bear the greatest 

 strain without moving, which is when the bent fin- 

 gers are a very little behind and under the right ear ; 

 then if he stretches his left arm with proper skill 

 and rapidity, and so plunges the whole mass of his 

 body and the whole effect of its velocity into the 

 bow, the elasticity of the bow gives way, and " the 





