70 FOREST CREATURES. 



stopped in its progress while yet imperfect, when but 

 just beginning to acquire shape and stability. 



Elsewhere a new bud has begun to show itself, but 

 before it could quite separate itself from the stem, 

 before it could rise out of and free itself from the 

 thraldom of the embryo state, the vital energy failed, 

 and so it has remained in the intermediate stage, while 

 advancing from mere soft coherency to concrete form : 

 between unripeness and maturity. In the shaping 

 there is present something of each state ; it is both, and 

 it is neither. The transformation is in progress, but 

 only half accomplished ; it is the process of crystallisa- 

 tion arrested before the precipitation is complete. 



Here is the perfected formation, and in juxta-posi- 

 tion, even uniting with it, the smooth pulp-like mass 

 that was about to become something, but which, before 

 the faint lines and ridges indicative of a growing form 

 could show more definite, was checked in its develop- 

 ment by a sudden failure of procreative strength. As 

 the ripple on the surface of the water betrays the 

 movement of a living thing below, so here a sHght 

 undulation shows the existence of the life which was 

 at work beneath, and which, had a few days more been 

 allowed it, would have burst forth as a new additional 

 spray. 



It is as though the growth had been arrested by 

 instantaneous petrifaction; the working, swelling, 



