SPRING, 
329 
forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within 
that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glanc¬ 
ing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or 
branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up 
in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly 
the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best ma¬ 
terial its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its chan¬ 
nel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious 
matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony 
system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the 
fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass 
of thawing clay ? The ball of the human finger is but 
a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their 
extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows 
what the human body would expand and flow out to 
under a more genial heaven ? Is not the hand a spread¬ 
ing 'palm leaf with its lobes and veins ? The ear may 
be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria , on the 
side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip — labi¬ 
um , from labor (?) —laps or lapses from the sides of the 
cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed 
drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the 
confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide 
from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and 
diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the 
vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larg¬ 
er or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and 
as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to 
flow, and more heat or other genial influences would 
have caused it to flow yet farther. 
Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the 
principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker 
of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion 
