22.  But in Dr. Gray’s 230th article comes this passage of real value.  (Italics mine—­all.) “While the newer layers of the wood abound in crude sap, which they convey to the leaves, those of the inner bark abound in elaborated sap, which they receive from the leaves, and convey to the cambium layer, or zone of growth.  The proper juices and peculiar products of plants are accordingly found in the foliage and bark, especially the latter.  In the bark, therefore, either of the stem or root, medicinal and other principles are usually to be sought, rather than in the wood.  Nevertheless, as the wood is kept in connection with the bark by the medullary rays, many products which probably originate in the former are deposited in the wood.”

23.  Now, at last, I see my way to useful summary of the whole, which I had better give in a separate chapter:  and will try in future to do the preliminary work of elaboration of the sap from my authorities, above shown, in its process, to the reader, without making so much fuss about it.  But, I think in this case, it was desirable that the floods of pros-, par-, peri-, dia-, and circumlocution, through which one has to wade towards any emergent crag of fact in modern scientific books, should for once be seen in the wasteful tide of them; that so I might finally pray the younger students who feel, or remember, their disastrous sway, to cure themselves for ever of the fatal habit of imagining that they know more of anything after naming it unintelligibly, and thinking about it impudently, than they did by loving sight of its nameless being, and in wise confession of its boundless mystery.

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In re-reading the text of this number I can secure my young readers of some things left doubtful, as, for instance, in their acceptance of the word ‘Monacha,’ for the flower described in the sixth chapter.  I have used it now habitually too long to part with it myself, and I think it will be found serviceable and pleasurable by others.  Neither shall I now change the position of the Draconidae, as suggested at p. 118, but keep all as first planned.  See among other reasons for doing so the letter quoted in p. 121.

I also add to the plate originally prepared for this number, one showing the effect of Veronica officinalis in decoration of foreground, merely by its green leaves; see the paragraphs 1 and 5 of Chapter VI.  I have not represented the fine serration of the leaves, as they are quite invisible from standing height:  the book should be laid on the floor and looked down on, without stooping, to see the effect intended.  And so I gladly close this long-lagging number, hoping never to write such a tiresome chapter as this again, or to make so long a pause between any readable one and its sequence.

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NOTES