After having walked some time by the side of a rivulet, we came into a beautiful and spacious meadow. It was enamelled with a thousand sorts of flowers, whose various colours were, at a distance, blended together and formed shining carpets, such as art has never woven. The meadow was bounded by a piece of rock, like a wall; against which grew a tree, like an espalier. It did not rise above a man’s height, but spread itself to the right and left, the length of the rock, above three hundred paces. Its leaves were very thin and very narrow, but in such abundance, that it was not possible to see the least 260part, either of the trunk or of the branches, or of the surface of the rock. Thou seest, said the Prefect, the product of the third and last Kernel; we give it the name of the Fantastical Tree.
From this precious tree it is, that inventions, discoveries, arts and sciences take their original; and that by a mechanism, which will surprise thee.
Thou knowest that the fibres of the leaves of a tree, are ranged uniformly on each of them; to see one, is to see all the rest. Here, this uniformity has no place; each leaf has its fibres ranged in a particular manner; there are not two alike in the Fantastical Tree. But, 261what is most wonderful, the fibres, on each leaf, are ranged with symmetry, and represent distinctly a thousand sorts of objects; one while a colonnade, an obelisk, a decoration; another while mechanical instruments; here, geometrical diagrams, algebraical problems, astronomical systems; there, physical machines, chymical instruments, plans of all kinds of works, verse, prose, conversation, history, romances, songs, and the like.
These leaves do not fade. When come to perfection they grow by degrees prodigiously small, and roll themselves up in a thousand folds. In this state, they are so light, that the wind blows them away; and so small, that they ent............