"And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the lone crags and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all his round surveyed."
It seems to me, in the nooks most haunted by honeysuckle in my own wood, that the reason for its twining is a very feminine one,—that it likes to twine; and that all these whys and wherefores resolve themselves at last into—what
a modern philosopher, of course, cannot understand—caprice.[[36]]
7. Farther on, Figuier, quoting St. Hilaire, tells us, of the creepers in primitive forests,—"Some of them resemble waving ribands, others coil themselves and describe vast spirals; they droop in festoons, they wind hither and thither among the trees, they fling themselves from one to another, and form masses of leaves and flowers in which the observer is often at a loss to discover on which plant each several blossom grows."
For all this, the real reasons will be known only when human beings become reasonable. For, except a curious naturalist or wistful missionary, no Christian has trodden the labyrinths of delight and decay among these garlands, but men who had no other thought than how to cheat their savage people out of their gold, and give them gin and smallpox in exchange. But, so soon as true servants of Heaven shall enter these Edens, and the Spirit of God enter with them, another spirit will also be breathed into the physical air; and the stinging insect, and venomous snake, and poisonous tree, pass away before the power of the regenerate human soul.
8. At length, on the structure of the tige, Figuier begins his real work, thus:—-
"A glance of the eye, thrown on the section of a log of wood destined for warming, permits us to recognize