122 PROSERPINA. 



round their edges, and are connected by softer skin, below, 

 as in fish and reptiles, (divided with exquisite lustre and flexi- 

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

 tended 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 protective 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 senseless 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 successive 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. 



CHAPTER XL 



GENEALOGY. 



1. BETURNING, after more than a year's sorrowful interval, 

 to my Sicilian fields, not incognisant, now, of some of the 

 darker realms of Proserpina ; and with feebler heart, and, it 

 may be, feebler wits, for wandering in her brighter ones, 

 I find what I had written by way of sequel to the last chapter 

 somewhat difficult, and extremely tiresome. Not the less, 

 after giving fair notice of the difficulty, and asking due pardon 

 for the tiresomeness, I am minded to let it stand ; trusting 

 to end, with it, once for all, investigations of the kind. But 

 in finishing this first volume of my School Botany, I must try 

 to give the reader some notion of the plan of the book, as it 



