hard shell, which, if broken, can only be
mended, like china--by sticking it together; secondly, organic substance of
armour which grows into its proper shape at once for good and all, and
can't be mended at all, if broken, (as of insects); thirdly, organic
substance of skin, which stretches, as the creatures grows, by cracking,
over a fresh skin which is supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees;
fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or
scales which can increase all round their edges, and are connected by
softer skin, below, as in fish and reptiles, (divided with exquisite lustre
and flexibility, in feathers of birds); and lastly, true elastic skin,
extended in soft unison with the creature's growth,--blushing with its
blood, fading with its fear; breathing with its breath, and guarding its
life with sentinel beneficence of pain.

6. It is notable, in this higher and lower range of organic beauty, that
the decoration, by pattern and colour, which is almost universal in the
protective coverings of the middle ranks of animals, should be reserved in
vegetables for the most living part of them, the flower only; and that
among animals, few but the malignant and senseless are permitted, in the
corrugation of their armour, to resemble the half-dead trunk of the tree,
as they float beside it in the tropical river. I must, however, leave the
scale patterns of the palms and other inlaid tropical {175} stems for
after-examination,--content, at present, with the general idea of the bark
of an outlaid tree as the successive accumulation of the annual protecting
film, rent into ravines of slowly increasing depth, and coloured, like the
rock, whose stability it begins to emulate, with the grey or gold of
clinging lichen and embroidering moss.

* * * * *

{176}

CHAPTER XI.

GENEALOGY.

1. Returning, after more than a year's sorrowful interval, to my Sicilian
fields,--not incognisant, now, of some of the darker realms of Proserpina;
and with feebler heart, and, it may be, feebler wits, for wandering in her
brighter ones,--I find what I had written by way of sequel to the last
chapter, somewhat difficult, and extremely tiresome. Not the less, after
giving fair notice of the difficulty, and asking due pardon for the
tiresomeness, I am minded to let it stand; trusting to end, with it, once
for all, investigations of the kind. But in finishing this first volume of
my Sch