withered head of a scabious half
an inch broad, happened to be seen rising up, out of the grass near me,
across the outline of the distant hill, so as seemingly to set
themselves closely beside the large pines and chestnuts which fringed
that distant ridge. The plantain was eight yards from me, and the
scabious seven; and to my sight, at these distances, the plantain and
the far away pines were equally clear (it being a clear day, and the sun
stooping to the west). The pines, four miles off, showed their branches,
but I could not count them; and two or three young and old Spanish
chestnuts beside them showed their broken masses distinctly; but I could
not count those masses, only I knew the trees to be chestnuts by their
general look. The plantain and scabious in like manner I knew to be a
plantain and scabious by their general look. I saw the plantain
seed-vessel to be, somehow, rough, and that there were two little
projections at the bottom of the scabious head which I knew to mean the
leaves of the calyx; but I could no more count distinctly the seeds of
the plantain, or the group of leaves forming the calyx of the scabious,
than I could count the branches of the far-away pines.

Sec. 6. Under these circumstances, it is quite evident that neither the
pine nor plantain could have been rightly represented by a single dot or
stroke of color. Still less could they be represented by a definite
drawing, on a small scale, of a pine with all its branches clear, or of
a plantain with all its seeds clear. The round dot or long stroke would
represent nothing, and the clear delineation too much. They were not
mere dots of color which I saw on the hill, but something full of
essence of pine; out of which I could gather which were young and which
were old, and discern the distorted and crabbed pines from the
symmetrical and healthy pines; and feel how the evening sun was sending
its searching threads among their dark leaves;--assuredly they were more
than dots of color. And yet not one of their boughs or outlines could be
distinctly made out, or distinctly drawn. Therefore, if I had drawn
either a definite pine, or a dot, I should have been equally wrong, the
right lying in an inexplicable, almost inimitable, confusion between the
two.

Sec. 7. "But is this only the case with pines four miles away, and with
plantains eight yards?"

Not so. Everything in the field of sight is equally puzzling, and can
only be drawn rightly on th