A NEW WONDER IN NATURAL HISTORY. 37 



table shape that ever grew before. And though as yet 

 we have found no creature answering to the description 

 of the dragon of fable, is, after all, that quadruped flpng 

 through the air, the kangaroo, or that other quadruped 

 with a bill like a duck, a less marvellous creature ? 

 The trees just discovered in America give an insight 

 into the active powers of Nature, surpassing by far all 

 our previous imaginings. And there are, doubtless, 

 processes daily at work, wholly unknown to us, which, 

 were they laid open, would appear veritable miracles. 

 As in those giant trees of California we behold how 

 grandly through a succession of ages vegetable life can 

 go on expanding and developing, seeming to be 



" Produced too slowly ever to decay ; " 



SO in the wheat grains and the peas found with the 

 mummies in the Pyramids, we have a contrary instance, 

 but equally wonderful, of vitality slumbering for 4,000 

 years ; yet on being aroused, waking up with as fresh life 

 as though its sleep had been but from the sunset of one 

 day to the sunrise of the following morn. 



A like wonder has been going on around us since the 

 world began, recurring annually at the allotted season, 

 without our having the least foreboding of its existence 

 or even of its possibility. And it is this : that the germ 

 of a new life should be deposited in the living parent, 

 and, instead of fecundating and growing and becoming 



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