animals!

12. Two pages farther on, however, (p. 45,) we get more about the marrow,
and of great interest,--to this effect, for I must abstract and complete
here, instead of translating.

"The marrow itself is surrounded, as the centre of an electric cable is, by
its guarding threads--that is to say, by a number of cords or threads
coming between it and the wood, and differing from all others in the tree.

"The entire protecting cylinder composed of them has been called the
'étui,' (or needle-case,) of the marrow. But each of the cords which
together form this étui, is itself composed of an almost infinitely
delicate thread twisted into a screw, like the common spring of a
letter-weigher or a Jack-in-the-box, but of exquisite fineness." Upon this,
two pages and an elaborate figure are given to these 'trachées'--tracheas,
the French call them,--and we are never told the measure of them, either in
diameter or length,[39] and still less, the use of them!

I collect, however, in my thoughts, what I have learned thus far.

13. A tree stem, it seems, is a growing thing, cracked outside, because its
skin won't stretch, paralysed inside, because its marrow won't grow, but
which continues the process of its life somehow, by knitted nerves without
any nervous energy in them, protected by spiral springs without any spring
in them.

Stay--I am going too fast. That coiling is perhaps prepared for some kind
of uncoiling; and I will try if I can't learn something about it from some
other book--noticing, as I pause to think where to look, the advantage of