138 Animal Morphology. 



be everything, and balance, which goes with force. Again, 

 Of what use would force be, saving to the foot, to such 

 creatures as most of the molluscous animals ? 



But, in a crude essay like the present, details must be cur- 

 tailed and broad outlines alone be suggested or touched 

 upon. 



In the vegetable kingdom morphology is already, at the 

 hands of Goethe, prepared to hand complete and exact, and 

 not as the present animal morphology, in a most sketchy 

 and hurried manner, with scarcely a moment's lingering to 

 see the fields, whether they yield oats or wheat ; the sketch 

 is so rapid, and withal so remarkably defective as a treatise 

 to itself ; but it is only given as a kind of suggestive ideal 

 system, which has been passed over in rapid succession, in 

 order that in a bird's-eye view the whole of the animal 

 kingdom might be taken in at one sweep. And now briefly 

 for the vegetable kingdom. 



The morphology of the leaf, through the flower to the 

 fruit, is now left just as it is found (discretion being the 

 better part of valour) ; so is the cortex, or the outer bark ; but 

 there are two things worthy of attention firstly, the relation 

 of the outer bark, or cortex, to the leaf ; and secondly, the 

 density of the wood in relation to the leaf. 



ist : In such trees as the oak, the ash, the beech, and the 

 elm, etc., all being simple leaves, the roughness of the bark, 

 when the trunk is considerable say of twenty years' growth 

 appears to depend, in some measure, upon the depth of 

 sinuosity, or the depth of serration, or dentation of the leaf. 

 The oak is deeply sinuous, and the bark is very rough ; the 

 hawthorn not far different, and it is very rough when 

 growing alone, and where the trunk has stood twenty or 

 thirty years. The leaf of the beech is very even all round 

 the margin, and the bark is the same ; the elm leaf is finely 

 serrated, and the roughness of the bark is very equal, but 



