

OUTSIDE AND IN. 117 



stem of a palm-tree is only a heap of leaf-roots built up like a 

 tower of bricks, year by year, and that the palm-tree really 

 grows on the top of it, like a bunch of fern ; but I've no 

 books here, and no time to read them if I had. If only I were 

 a stronge giant, instead of a thin old gentleman of fifty-five, 

 how I should like to pull up one of those little palm-trees by 

 the roots (by the way, what are the roots of a palm like ? 

 and, how does it stand in sand, where it is wanted to stand, 

 mostly? Fancy, not knowing that, at fifty-five !) that grow 

 all along the Riviera ; and snap its stem in two, and cut it 

 down the middle. But I suppose there are sections enough 

 now in our grand botanical collections, and you can find it all 

 out for yourself. That you should be able to ask a question 

 clearly, is two-thirds of the way to getting it answered ; and 

 I think this chapter of mine will at least enable you to ask 

 some questions about the stem, though what a stem is, truly, 

 " I am not sent to tell thee, for I do not know." 



KNARESBOROUGH, 3Qt7i April, 1876. 



I see by the date of last paragraph that this chapter has 

 been in my good Aylesbury printer's type for more than a 

 year and a half. At this rate, Proserpina has a distant chance 

 of being finished in the spirit-land, with more accurate infor- 

 mation derived from the archangel Uriel himself, (not that he 

 is likely to know much about the matter, if he keeps on let- 

 ting himself be prevented from ever seeiog foliage in spring- 

 time by the black demon -winds,) about the year 2000. In the 

 meantime, feeling that perhaps I am sent to tell my readers a 

 little more than is above told, I have had recourse to my bo- 

 tanical friend, good Mr. Oliver of Kew, who has taught me, 

 first, of palms, that they actually stitch themselves into the 

 ground, with a long dipping loop, up and down, of the root 

 fibres, concerning which sempstress work I shall have a 

 month's puzzlement before I can report on it ; secondly, that 

 all the increment of tree stem is, by division and multiplica- 

 tion of the cells of the wood, a process not in the least to be 

 described as ' sending down roots from the leaf to the ground.' 

 I suspected as much in beginning to revise this chapter ; but 



