know one thing which I ought very
thoroughly to have known at least thirty years ago, namely, the true
difference in the way of building the trunk in outlaid and inlaid wood. I
have an idea that the stem of a palm-tree is only a heap of leaf-roots
built up like a tower of bricks, year by year, and that the palm tree
really grows on the top of it, like a bunch of fern; but I've no books
here, and no time to read them if I had. If only I were a strong giant,
instead of a thin old gentleman of fifty-five, how I should like to pull up
one of those little palm-trees by the roots--(by the way, what are the
roots of a palm like? and, how does it stand in sand, where it is wanted to
stand, mostly? Fancy, not knowing that, at fifty-five!)--that grow all
along the Riviera; and snap its stem in two, and cut it down the middle.
But I suppose there are sections enough now in our grand botanical
collections, and you can find it all out for yourself. That you should be
able to ask a question clearly, is two-thirds of the way to getting it
answered; and I think this chapter of mine will at {167} least enable you
to ask some questions about the stem, though what a stem is, truly, "I am
not sent to tell thee, for I do not know."

KNARESBOROUGH, _30th April, 1876_.

I see by the date of last paragraph that this chapter has been in my good
Aylesbury printer's type for more than a year and a half. At this rate,
Proserpina has a distant chance of being finished in the spirit-land, with
more accurate information derived from the archangel Uriel himself, (not
that he is likely to know much about the matter, if he keeps on letting
himself be prevented from ever seeing foliage in spring-time by the black
demon-winds,) about the year 2000. In the meantime, feeling that perhaps I
_am_ sent to tell my readers a little more than is above told, I have had
recourse to my botanical friend, good Mr. Oliver of Kew, who has taught me,
first, of palms, that they actually stitch themselves into the ground, with
a long dipping loop, up and down, of the root fibres, concerning which
sempstress-work I shall have a month's puzzlement before I can report on
it; secondly, that all the increment of tree stem is, by division and
multiplication of the cells of the wood, a process not in the least to be
described as 'sending down roots from the leaf to the ground.' I suspected
as much in beginning to revise this chapter; but hold to my judgment in not
cancelling it.