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THE ,PHENOMENA

OF

PLANT LIFE,

Br LEO'i Po coon.

LecruRER! ON BOTANY aT THE ROYAL SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, MANCHESTER; AUTHOR
or MANCHESTER WALKS AND WILD FLOWERS, ETC.

BOSTON:
T. H. CARTER & COMPANY.

1866.

ROCKWELL AND RoLLIns,
PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS,
122 Washington St., Boston.

Tue delightful series of papers which compose this little
volume are taken from recent numbers of an English peri-
odical, ‘‘ The Intellectual Repository.”

We are led to collect and publish them in this form, from
the great pleasure their perusal has afforded ourselves.

They will be found to describe, in beautiful language, the
still more beautiful, and living ‘‘ Phenomena of Plant Life;”
and, if we mistake not, will afford a rich mental and moral
repast to every careful reader.

Referring mainly to the character of the work, we doubt if
a more ‘elegant gift volume will be offered the present season.

PUBLISHERS.

Phenomena of Plant-Life.

CHAPTER I.
WINTER.

THE new year opens very appropriately in the depth
of winter, since the commencement of all things, both
in the natural and in the moral world, takes place in
secrecy and seeming darkness. Yet new year’s day
is a matter only of the artificial division of time. The
phenomena of living nature which mark the actual
progress of the year, are independent altogether of the
almanac. Long before we exchange our kindly greet-
ings, and those happy salutations and generous wishes
of the séason, that signalize the advent of the new
year to our firesides, — long before this, it has been
new year’s day to a thousand buds and flowers, both
in field and garden. Delicate looms have been set in
motion to weave that sweet apparel with which, in
due time, even Solomon, in all his glory, might not
compare. Deep in the hidden chambers of many a
root and little bulb, have commenced in quiet energy
those wonderful preparations which, when summer

1*

6 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

bids welcome, charm our eyes with lovely colors, and
our nostrils with aromas. In a word, though to civil-
ized man it is the jirst day of the year, to vegetable
life it is a period of advanced infancy. Rightly to
esteem the flow of the seasons, we must view them as
an unbroken sequence of new developments. Though
one class of appearances may come to a close, another
rises out of it almost before we miss the departing
one; as on a fair midsummer’s night, beforo we have
lost the last trails of the reluctant sunset, the calm,
still, sweet aurora of the new sunrise, peeping over
the mountain-tops, enters our hearts like the smile of
a child.

In a word, again, we never see beginnings. We
think we trace rivers to their sources, but the first
trickles among the moss on the mountain-side, are
collections of water-drops that have their own anterior
history. The coy sources of the Nile, that have at
length rewarded enterprise, far back as they lie in
those suljry African plains, do but represeut a stage
in the life of the immortal stream. The forest that
has been venerable for ages, began in acorns and tiny
seeds, whence derived, even the philosopher can only
guess, The shells that inlay the wrinkles on the
sands, — these come tossed up, it may be, from some
birthplace that human eye has never beheld ;— it is
always something in a measure accomplished that we
obtain ; early as we commence our search, we always

WINTER. 7

enter late, —the year has begun before we thought,
or could be quick enough to watch. So it is with the
operations of Divine Love. Everywhere we are
steeped in blessings that lie back beyond all memory
of beginning, or perception of cause. We may learn
to appreciate more fully, — and understanding better,
to be more grateful, but for the first flow of them, we
must ask of the ‘ morning stars’? that ‘sang togeth-
er,”’ and of the ‘sons of. God” that ‘shouted for
joy.” The simplest throb of pleasure that swells the
soul in connection with the good or true, if we will
but look at ourselves in the light of the recipients,
that we are, is no incident purely of the hour, but a
result of something our diary does not record; far,
far away in the heavenly era of earliest boyhood, was
sown the seed that brings forth that pleasant fruit.
Take first, as an illustration of this wonderful win-
ter-life of plants, the little bulb of the common garden
crocus. At this season, if we have not one at hand to
dig out of the ground, it is easy to procure an exam-
ple from any seed-shop. The bulb itself is round, flat-
tened at top and bottom, and covered with elegantly-
netted brown coats. Upon the summit are elevated
several white spires, plump, hard, and pointed, and in
these, if we dissect carefully, will be found all the gol-
den glory that would have been unfolded in March
and April. The petals are there, minute it is true,
but in that respect not inferior, in their degree, to

8 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

kings and princes as they lie in their czadles ; the sta-
mens are fully formed, and stand as the principal part of
the blossom, and round about are tiny spear-like leaves.
Every cluster is wrapped separately in transparent
clothing, and over the whole are strong and opaque
vestments that protect the precious rudiments alike
from cold and wet. By degrees the spires grow tall-
er; presently they burst at the tips, and eventually
the foliage and yellow vases peep above the ground.
The bees are glad when they arrive, and visit them al-
ternately with the palm-bloom in the hedges, return-
ing from their happy labor all besprinkled with the
yellow pollen. If afew crocus bulbs be placed ina
tea saucer, with a little cotton-wool as a foundation,
and the saucer be kept constantly supplied with water,
so that the wool shall be permanently saturated with
wet, the spires will open just the same as if in the
earth, and make even the gloomiest of back sitting-
rooms cheerful at the dreariest season of the year,
opening ppeir gay corollas one after another. To
watch them grow day by day, is alone a cheerful
sight. The more we can keep ourselves face to face
with the simple and pretty little things of. nature,
bringing them into our parlors, nursing them upon
our mantelpieces, making them companions of our sol-
itude, the more truly do we learn to love what is
grand and noble in the outer world. Improving ideas
are not got only —nor perhaps so much —from the con-

WINTER. 9

templation of waterfalls, mighty mountains, and ex-
tended prospects, as from the day-by-day quiet obser-
vation of the wonderful ways of God in the calling
forth of a little flower from its nest, and painting it
with miraculous hues that seem impossible to proceed
from dull, cold soil. The glory of God is to bring or-
der out of confusion, peace out of discord, life out of
death ; and nowhere in nature do we see it more beau-
tifally expressed than in the birth of the silver-mantled
flower, —a birth that comes not through any aid o:
encouragement from man, but apparently of its own
free action. The yellow crocus is a native of the
South of Europe, though introduced so long ago to
our own island, as to be one of the oldest inhabitants
of the garden. Few think, perhaps, when surveying
its varied loveliness, how many countries and how
many years of diligence have contributed to the gar-
den; yet there is scarcely a country beneath the sky
but has been laid under contribution, and there is now
in England a summary of the floral treasures of the
whole world. The purple crocus, on the other hand,
is an ancient Briton, counting itself as part of the
grass of the field, —not, indeed, as a common object
of the country, like the primrose or the daffodil, but
as one of the select few that are confined to certain
spots. Near Nottingham, in March and April, the
meadows are flooded with its refreshing bloom, and
the tlowers, brought home in handfuls by the city

10 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

children, lie scattered about the streets as though
Nature had lost her way.

What the crocus during winter is in the earth, the
flower-buds of many trees are upon the boughs, These
very trees, which to the eye are least provided with
flowery charms, and which never aspire, even in the
height of their life, to be more than what neutral tints
are to the artist, these very trees are in winter so
rich in wonder, as to take rank with the most alluring
forms of nature. The common hazel-nut in mid-win-
ter is hung with innumerable gray-green clusters ; the
alder and willow-buds swell with leafy effort; the lat-
ter often burst before Christmas, and disclose their
silky contents. Everywhere there is the note of prep-
aration, and though the cold days and colder nights
may chill their sap, the movement is still upwards ; —
spring is the desire, spring is the promised land; and
though the fireside may prove more inviting than the
woodland, and incuriousness may leave them all unob-
served, no matter; every tree moves its steady way,
seeking outlets at a thousand points; and by-and-by,
when a tempting afternoon carries our footsteps across
the meadows, we look round in congratulation that
spring is beginning, whereas in truth, it is we who
are just beginning to observe. Thus is. winter in con-
nection with plant-life, if we will only go forth and
learn, a time of grand assurance to us that nothing
ever absolutely ceases. The particular organs con-

WINTER. 11

structed for the performance of given functions may
collapse and go to decay, but the life which acts
through them never ceases for one instant. Sleep in
the animal, leaflessness in the plant and tree, indicate
only that nature is gathering up her strength for new
movements; that which seems cessation is the transit
from a weaker to a more powerful state. Winter, in
fact, is the necessity of all beginning, as summer is
the necessity of all ripeness and perfection.

I have often been struck in winter by the peculiar
beauty, then revealed, in the architecture of the oak
as compared with the poplar, of the elm as compared
with the larch, and so on, all through the long list of
the vegetable patriarchs. Winter is needed in order
that we may have their various figures truly disclosed,
since in summer all is concealed by masses of foliage ;
and it is not the least among the many solaces of
drear December, that the manly dignity of one kind of
tree shall be brought into contrast with the feminine
gracefulness of another, and that we shall be reminded
by these disclosures, that truth abides not in apparel,
but in those inner lineaments of things which in the
heyday of excitement and pleasure, we are apt to for-
get. In summer, we overlook ; the glory of the world
encircles us, and we are content; in the summer of
life, similarly circled by its charms, we are as apt to
forget that all is passing away; we eat and drink and
are merry. Thanks, then, be to God, that secular

12 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

pleasures fade as a leaf, that the outsides of things are
stripped away, and that the mournfulness of separa-
tion and bereavement come round inevitably, for these
are the processes that place us in the presence of what
is permanent. As winter in the natural world is to
the accomplished mind no time of gloom, but a period
rather for realizing new delights, though possibly
tinged with seriousness, so winter in the life of the
soul, need bring no despondency or sadness, since it
is then that we gather our best glimpses of immortal
truth.

So in winter have I often been gladdened by the
sight of the glorious ivy boughs, that mantling the
aged trunk, wreathe it with perennial and shining
verdure. When most other things are withheld, the
ivy, the holly-tree with its scarlet bracelets, the mis-
tletoe loaded with pearls, maintain for us the sweet
influence of nature, — images of indestructibility ; and
triumphing over darkness and cold, are well used to
decorate eur houses and churches at Christmas. There
is more than appears at first sight in the use of these
plants for Christmas ornaments. Antiquaries refer us
to fancies of the ancients, that the sylvan deities
(themselves purely fabulous beings) being frozen out,
or at least benumbed, in their native woods, were glad
to take shelter, like robins, in the vicinity and beneath
the roofs of human habitations, and that these cheer-
ful sprays of evergreens were to give them a kind of

WINTER. 13

welcome, so that they might not feel altogether lost
and exiled. The truth lics probably in the ancient
symbolic use of trees and shrubs in connection with
religious faith, on which ground they were used in
pious ceremonies, and placed beside the altars, as vis-
ible representatives of those peculiar blessings. which
the deity to whom they were consecrated, was be-
lieved willing to bestow where reverently asked. Our
Lord’s coming to the earth in the depth of winter, was
representative of the time when man most needs Him ;
these rich, red berries and lustrous leaves of the holly,
triumphing over the asperities of frost and snow, pic-
ture beautifully His dominion over the powers of dark-
ness, and are life, as it were, made visible.

Nor are evergreens all that greet the eye in mid-
winter. There are flowers, too, few it may be, but
choice and pure, sufficient to assure us that Flora never
forgets her prime duty; and though she may repose
awhile, provides sweetness for every day. Nothing
is fairer than the Christmas-rose, though not a rose in
nature. The large white petals form elegant concavi-
ties, with a tuft of yellow stamens in the centre, after
the fashion of a little wheat-sheaf, and round about the
latter is set a ring of green honeycups, in which, even
now, scanty nectar may be discovered. The appear-
ance of these Christmas flowers, following as they do
many of late autumn, illustrates beautifully that al-
though our seasons in the North are so marked, yet,

2

14 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

as in the tropics, where the procession is continuous,
we in England have in reality all four periods side by
side. Nature has so ordered her economy, that spring,
summer, autumn, winter, are all represented every
week in the year; not necessarily in atmospheric phe-
nomena, but in the life-history of trees and plants.
The little cresses that dot the wheat-fields with white
flowers in March and April, have run through their
summer and closed their autumn, while to the lilies it
is only spring ;— when the lilies stand white, and tall,
and fragrant in their queenly pride, the Michaelmas-
daisy and the farewell-summer are only bestirring
themselves; and these, in their departure, are soon
forgotten in the chrysanthemums. And soit goes on,
life ever treading upon the steps of decay, all forces
and phenomena summed up in every circle in which
we may find ourselves. There is no retiring from the
presence of life, any more than, by taking the “ wings
of the morning,’’ that we may dwell in the “ utter-
most partg of the earth,’’ we escape from the Presence
that ruleth all.

CHAPTER II.
EARLY SPRING.

Tue essential sign of spring in northern latitudes is
the swelling of the buds upon the trees, and those of
the sturdy bushes which the husbandman uses for
hedges. The appearance of flowers, except to the
experienced eye, cannot always be depended upon.
Many that would be thought heralds of the new season
are in reality relics of the year that has departed, —
epitaphs on the summer of six months before, —
memorials rather than prophecies. Such is the case
with the wall-flower, which is often seen plentifully in
bloom in January, unless the winter be very severe, —
the succession of flowers from side-shoots having pro-
ceeded uninterruptedly perhaps since the previous
May. This long-protracted flow of bloom is usually
attributable to the flowers being gathered for love-
tokens or personal pleasure, and thus hindered from
fulfilling the grand purpose for which all flowers are
in every case developed, namely, the origination of
seed from which new plants shall be reared, to take
the place of the parents, when the latter lie withered
and dead. As long as a plant is hindered from pro-

16 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

ceeding with the due preparation of its intended
seeds, so long will it persist in its efforts, and renew —
them, striving, till all its vitality is exhausted, to leave
if it be only a single voucher of its honest toil. A
thousand times have I noticed this wonderful and quiet
energy in operation. In the fields some hungry quad-
ruped bites off the young green flower-head as a relish
to the insipid grass;—-no matter, from every joint
below, anew shoot is soon put forth; and in a few
weeks, where there would have been, perhaps, no
more than a single blossom, there are now a dozen
flowers. So in the garden some lily hand crops a
flower white as itself, and if the structure of the plant
permit, by and by the whiteness gleams from one little
side branchlet after another, and in a way that would
probably never have happened save for the destruction
of the first-born. Applying our knowledge of this
principle to the interpretation of the Christmas wall-
flowers, it is easy to understand how it happens that’
their bloom lingers so long. Many a posy, when the
days were at their best, was probably made odorous
with the carly blossoms of this cheerful plant; these
that come in the dull cold days of winter are the proof
of the hindered efforts, and a witness to unflinching
perseverance in the fair endeavor, — a perseverance
that may read us all a gentle lesson, —strive to the
last ; if we fail, we have at least deserved to win.
Very different are such flowers as the yellow pile-

EARLY SPRING. 17

wort and the golden coltsfoot. These are genuine
spring blossoms, never appearing until the new year
has made a fair start, nor renewing their flowers in
summer and autumn. Being “ weeds,’? and never
growing in pastures, they are seldum cropped or
gathered, so that the original preparation of bloom is
generally followed by successful result inseed. Very
pretty is it, when the last of the snow has dissolved
from the ground, to see the bright rays of the pilewort
among the half-withered relics of the past autumn
upon the hedgebank, and their young leaves spreading
a carpet over the heretofore brown earth in woods and
groves; no less pretty is the spectacle of the colts-
foot, when it opens its yellow disk, formed of a hun-
dred rays as fine as needles, and this without a single
leaf to stand in contrast. Both flowers need the
sunshine in order that they may expand. On dull and
cloudy days they remain fast shut. up, but with the
first kind beam from the sky they spread their little
petals, and glow as long as the atmosphere is genial.
The pilewort is not unlike a buttercup, but the leaves
are rounded and polished, and it rarely grows taller
than the breadth of one’s hand. ‘‘ Weed ”’ it may be
in popular estimation, but the wood:pigeons do not so
lightly esteem it. The fleshy roots, shaped like little
round beans, lie very near the surface of the soil: the
rain washes the earth from them, and lays them bare,
Q*

18 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

and these birds come and make their meals on the
supply thus provided.

Every living creature has its cornfields; true, it is
only man who is called upon to sow and reap, to grind
and to bake into bread, —and this, in order that by
virtuous and regular labor he may have his intellect
and affections stimulated ; but cornfields, in their kind,
are spread for everything that eats, —composed, it
may be, of the simplest and weakest plants in nature ;
still, in their importance to tens of thousands of
speechless creatures, no less momentous than the
broad acres of wheat and barley, oats, rice, rye,
millet, and maize, that supply the human population
of the earth with their daily sustenance. There is
probably no plant in nature that does not directly
support the life of some little animal: it was for this
purpose that plants were in great measure called into
being, and when we are tempted to despise the insig-
nificant ones, and to call them ‘‘ weeds,’”’? we should
remembeg that nothing has been made in vain, and
that everything has been designed for some generous
purpose. But why should they be called ‘‘ weeds”’ ?
Weeds are flowers out of the place for which Provi-
dence designed them. Ifa lily spring up by some
casualty in a potato-bed, it is in that place a weed,
quite as much so as a dandelion is among the tulips;
but neither of them is a weed in its native woods or
fields, since these are the habitations assigned to

°

EARLY SPRING. 19

them, and in which, to eyes that look on the sweet
simplicity of creation with joy and pleasure, they are
always beautiful. Very much of what we are apt to
consider the uncomeliness of things comes in reality
of our not seeing them in their natural and proper
conditions, but under some artificial and constrained
circumstances that interfere grievously with the native
characters. Look, for instance, at the unfortunate
monkey, dragged from its native haunts, and carried
about the streets on an organ-top. There it may well
look ridiculous and even disgusting. But see the
creature at play in its native woods, its free nature
finding scope and opportunity, and living in harmony
with the rudeness of the scene, and instead of being
absurd, it becomes graceful, and the tree seems incom-
plete when the creature quits it. Much the same is it
with the despised plants denominated ‘‘ weeds.”
True, if allowed to spread unchecked, many kinds
establish upon farm-land a disastrous empire, that
supersedes the prospective crops, strangling the roots,
twining round the stems, or mingling their pernicious
seeds with the wholesome grain; but this is a fact
belonging to a different class altogether from that
which includes the consideration of the absolute and
intrinsic beanty and usefulness of the plants. Rag-
wort, that covers the neglected fields with gaudy
yellow, nourishes the caterpillar of a lovely butterfly
that will eat no other leaf with coztent ; — thistles,

20 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

that aggravate the farmer uncareful to nip them in the
beginning, supply in their seeds food for innumerable
little birds, especially those of the goldfinch kind.
Both plants, moreover, in vigor of growth, elegance
of organization, clear brightness of color, and long
continuing flow of cheerful bloom, take place with the
handsomest that the profusion of nature flings abroad.
We may travel many miles, and explore whole prov-
inces, and not find a more charming plant than the
crimson musk-thistle. In its native haunts and proper
abiding-places (which are by the edges of green lanes,
and on green and breezy downs overlooking the sea,
as on that fair green hill at Clevedon, from which we
look across the water to South Wales, and far away
westwards towards the Atlantic) it lifts a tall and
woolly stem, crowned with some halfdozen gorgeous
and half-drooping crimson heads, smelling of honey
and musk, and more brilliant in effect than ten thou,
sand of the far-fetched, dear-bought, fashionable
exotics ingrardens.

All right-minded people thank God every day for
His greater gifts and bounties; it is doubtful if any
of us remember to thank Him as steadily for the sim- ,
ple and common things of nature, which we seem to
ourselves to feel as our right, or at all events as so
much a part of the very idea of the world as to be-
come our lawful inheritance, and thus not needing to
be considered as objects of gratefulness. A thankful

EARLY SPRING. 21

spirit recognizes the goodness of God in the weakest
as well as in the strongest of things; and to my mind
it seems that while I am thankful to Him for the
lustre of the evening sky, for food and raiment, for
the bestowal of friends, for the sustenance of hope
and faith, for the prolongation of life, —though the
heart may have sorrowful tombstones in it, —still, I
fall short and forget if I am not thankful, too, for the
sweet shape, and hue, and odor, of that sea-side this-
tle, since it possesses not only an immaculate beauty
of its own, but, associated as it is with the sound of
the waves, and with events long since passed, becomes
a keynote forever to some of the sweetest experiences
of bygone life. All things deserve such thankfulness,
the commonest as well as the grandest, for the common
ones are the heritage of the poor, given them ‘ with-
out money and without price,’ so that it is but sim-
plest philanthropy to be glad of the presence of what
all can enjoy without cost.”

These, however, are matters rather divergent from
the idea of plant-life in early spring. The appearance of
the buds of trees is without question the most reliable,
since there is a greater steadiness and exactitude in
the succession and periodicity of their vital phenomena
than oceurs in very many herbaceous plants, though
to appearance the latter may be quite as regular. It
is not a little curious that the renewal of trees by
annual shoots developed from buds is a matter of

22 PHENOMENA OF PLANT LIFE.

comparatively recent observation. The ancients had
a name for the buds of trees; but it was our illustri-
ous countryman, John Ray, a minister of the gospel
in the time of the Commonwealth, who first demon-
strated scientifically that the increase of trees takes
place by means of such annual sproutings. Some of
the German naturalists regard the trunk of a tree asa
mere mass of obsoléte vegetable matter, and the
annual shoots as comparable to young plants that rise
out of the earth in spring from seeds. To this view
of the matter there are, however, grave objections,
Tivery kind of tree has a fixed lease of life ; it is com-
petent to acquire a given stature and a definite profile
and physiognomy, and until this has been attained, it
can hardly be said that the tree is other than a living
unity. Be this as it may, the wonderful structure of
the buds, and their prodigious powers of life, are of
the most singular and striking interest. Every bud
consists of a growing nucleus, a little heart of pith
seeking #0 push forwards ; and overlying it, a number
of minute leaves, mere rudiments of proper leaves,
which protect the centre from the asperities of the
weather, but yield this way and that, correspondingly
with the enlargement of the-germ in the interior. By
degrees true leaves are developed, a slender shoot is
protruded, and it may be that in this there is the com-
mencement ofa large bough. The outer, rudimentary
leaves undergo no change; they retain their places as

EARLY SPRING. 23

long as useful, then drop off. ‘The shape and color
of the buds are no less various than their economy is
admirable. In the beech-tree they are slender and
pointed, resembling brown thorns; in the oak, solid
and amber-olive color; in the ash, of the blackness of
soot ; in the lime, yellowish-red ; in the horse-chestnut,
covered with abundant sticky matter. Every tree, in
a word, may be told as readily in the earliest days
of spring by its buds alone, as in summer by its
flowers, and when in full leat, by the peculiarities of
its foliage. This is one of the great charms of the
study of nature. We have always something to fall
back upon. Every season writes the names of its
trees and plants legibly and unmistakably, but in a
different mode. We never need be at loss, since the
disappearance of one feature is the signal for another
to come into view. The buds open at very various
times in the different kinds of trees. The first to come
in leaf is the woodbine or wild honeysuckle, which is
often in nearly full foliage many weeks before others
have begun to move ; the elder is also very prompt;
and soon after them come those small, green, countless
specks in the hedges, that by and by are to make the
richness of the hawthorn, and become dappled with
its crowd of odorous blossoms. Marvellous is it to
note the power they have of resisting cold. Doubt-
less their progress is checked by the advent of a
frosty night after they have commenced ; the wonder,

24 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

however, is not that they should be checked, but that
they should hold such an amount of inner warmth as
to stand proof against the bitterness that destroys
tender things from India with a touch. In severe
winters many trees get quite killed; but thousands
of others prove their invulnerableness, and seem, as it
were, to rise from the dead. Many and wonderful
have been the miracles wrought for special moral pur-
poses, but no miracle has ever exceeded in sweet and
impressive power, that great one we all witness every
spring, when that which seemed quite dead, shows
life in unabated energy, and this without the visible
presence of a miracle-worker.

Curious is it to note also how many of the buds
prepared by a tree never come to maturity, nor even
sprout. Buds are disposed so symmetrically upon the
branches, that were every one of them to be pushed
forth into a twig, and again produce other twigs,
there would soon be an inextricable mass, utterly pre-
ventive ef ventilation and the entrance of light, and
the tree would die of self-suffocation. But the econ-
omy of nature provides for the premature death and
destruction of an enormously large proportion, no
more growing than there is ample room for, yet as
many as will render the tree perfect and picturesque.
So admirable is the dispensation of natural laws,
evoking order out of disorder, and making what seems
to be injury and loss the very means towards securing

EARLY SPRING. 25

the highest beauty and perfection. Such is every-
where a grand characteristic of the works of God:
what in our short-sightedness appears defect and
blight, is in truth a preliminary step towards the
most exquisite and perfect design.

3

CHAPTER III.
APRIL.

Aprit, if the season be moderately genial, is one of
the most remarkable months of the English year.
Winter, though it may return now and then in bitter
nights, is no longer felt injuriously during the day ; "the
east winds may blacken the poplar-flowers, and try our
tempers; but spring, in defiance of all hindrances,
pursues its way steadily, resolutely, and with success.
Nowhere is this more beautifully shown than in the
vegetation of the seeds bequeathed to the soil in the
previous autumn, and which after lying in the earth
apparently dead for many months, now assert their
intense vitality, and lift their green blades into the air.
A seed js one of the most wonderful things in the
world, containing not only the first principles of the
plant, but holding the power to lie, as it were, asleep
until the fitting period, for the expansion of the germ,
and meanwhile, withstanding influences of destruction
such as totally dissolve objects that have no life in
them. When we consider the exquisite minuteness
of many seeds, this property becomes still more
amazing. Peas, beans, and similar seeds, though by

APRIL. 27

no means the largest, are yet of immense bulk com
pared with the seeds of the orchis; and these last,
though so fine as to be scarcely visible except in a
heap, are in their turn probably as much larger than
those of the moss. There is reason to believe that in
the atmosphere are constantly floating millions upon
millions of delicate germs; that we take these germs
into our bodies when we breathe; that they become
embedded in every species and description of food ;
that they are associated, in a word, with every con-
ceivable substance, and are as universal in their
penetration as the light of the sun. The inexpressible
minuteness of every particular seed alone renders this
possible, and perhaps it is by the minuteness that the
indestructibility is partly insured. Seeds, accordingly,
are not to be thought of merely in the idea of those
we sow in the garden, with a view to wholesome veg-
etables and fragrant flowers. . These form but a very
minute portion of the entire quantity; and though
their destiny may seem more dignified, it may be ques-
* tioned whether in the economy of nature the little
seeds which we never behold, do not play a part quite
as salutary and important. For in judging of nature
and its processes, we err if we think those only to be
grand and splendid which are promotive of benefit to
ourselves. Since all things have been created for the
glory of God, an equal splendor attaches to every
phenomenon and process, however trifling in our eyes,

28 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

that conduces in any way to the stability and decora-
tion of the general fabric. These tiny seeds that float
in the air, have for their special function the starting
of life in places where previously there was none.
The moment that any surface previously bare, becomes
moistened with rain or dew, they settle upon it as bees
do upon flowers. If not burned up by the sun, ina
little while there is a thin green film of vegetation,
and by and by is seen a colony of mosses. Hence,
upon the old cottage roof, especially if it: be of thatch,
that sweet and rich variety of tender leaf and blossom.
Every spray is the growth of a seed wafted thither by
the wind. It almost seems as if the atmosphere held
plants in solution, and deposited them as a chemical °
fluid deposits crystals.

But let us inquire what a seed is composed of;
what is the constitution, or at least, the aspect of
those wonderful parts which a little rain and a little
sunshine can tempt into expansion, and by and by
develop gato a flower or tree. In its most perfect
state, a seed consists of several distinct clements.
Outside of all is the protecting skin, by botanists
called the ‘‘ testa; ’’ when this is removed, the interior
is found to consist either of two solid white halves,
usually flattened upon their inner surfaces, as in a pea
or bean, or it consists of a quantity of white and fari-
naceous matter, well represented in the flower of a
grain of wheat. Look a little further, and if the seed

APRIL. 29

be one of the former kind, at one extremity, uniting
the two halves, is a delicate hinge; if, on the other
hand, the seed be like that of the wheat-grain, the
hinge-like body is embedded in the farinaceous mattcr.
The actual and growing part of the seed is this deli-
cate little point that we compare to a hinge. The
proper name for it is the ‘‘ embryo ;”’ and though the
remaining portion is indispensable, from this alone are
developed the stem and ultimate foliage. The farina-
naceous matter is termed the “‘ albumen,’’ and is the
food of the embryo while germinating, all being con-
sumed during’ the processes of growth, so that when
the plant makes its appearance above ground, there is
nothing left below but an empty husk. Seeds that
consist of two distinct halves have their albumen
wrapped up in the substance of these two pieces ; and
then it usually happens that at the time of germina-
tion, the seed-leaves rise to the surface of the soil,
and spread themselves horizontally. Their primary
function, however, is precisely the same, as proved
by the experiment of breaking or tearing them off,
when the embryo almost immediately withers away.
The embryo of the sced is to the plant what infant
offspring is to the animal ; and this leads us to one of
the most beautiful considerations of their history.
Providence, in assigning duties, and conferring affec-
tions and tender sympathies, gives to the mother an
inexpressible love for her offspring, and impels her to
3*

30 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

nourish and cherish it; and in order that this deep love
may exercise itself in the way most needed, gives at
the same moment the physical power of replenishing
the little life from the fountains of her bosom. This
rule, in some mode or other, holds throughout the
whole extent of organic nature; and strange as it
may seem in the first statement, is not absent even
from the plant; for the seed is the offspring, and,
though cast away, often to a long distance from the
parent, is still provided for, after the same manner as
the tiny suckling ; — the embryo lies between the pair
of nutrient hemispheres, and draws from them the
support needed to its fragile existence, and which
alone it can make use of. Not until it is somewhat
grown, and has become hearty, can it feed indepen-
dently on the earth and water which surround it; not
until those beautiful tints of tender green make their
appearance, can it live except on the supplies derived
immediately from the parent. The production of the
fruit or sged of a plant, though in strict agreement
with the repetition of an animal of any kind, under
the law which has its maximum in parent and child, is
thus not exactly equivalent to the birthday of the
offspring. The latter, in the plant, truly commences
with the process of germination, and may be delayed
almost indefinitely.

The farinaceous matter contained in the seed does
not nourish the embryo in the crude form in which we

APRIL. 31

find it on dissecting the seed prior to the commence-
ment of germination; the latter process begins with
the conversion of the farina into a sweet and sugary
fluid, which last is the actual food of the little plant,
and thus forms another point of resemblance between
the growing seed and the young of the lactiparous
animal. This is very familiarly illustrated in the
preparation of malt from barley, which is begun by
sprinkling the grain with water, then warming it from
below, so as to excite growth, and as soon as the
sprouts appear, increasing the heat so as to destroy
life. The grain, which at first was comparatively.
tasteless, is by the commencement of growth rendered
sweet, and the result is shown in the agreeable flavor
of the malt. Phenomena like these are surely quite
as wonderful as those to which we are apt to confine
our admiration, as the movements of the heavenly
bodies, the white tumble of the waterfall, and the roll
of the sea. We-scarcely notice them, perhaps; but
it is on the due effectuation of the great laws and
principles which are expressed in such phenomena,
that the permanency and the grandeur of the world
depend no less importantly. Nothing in nature is
large or little, or before or after another in worth or
necessity. Happy the mind that tutors itself into the
recognition of the Divine wisdom, not less in the
arrangements made for the growth of the minutest
seed, than in the mafestic operations which give us

32 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

light and darkness and the seasons! One of the
greatest privileges we enjoy in these modern times is
the perception, in some small degree, of these wonder-
fullaws and processes. They were quite unknown
to the ancients. To them was given only the external
grandeur of the universe, — more than ample, without
doubt, to fill the soul of man with rapture for ever
and ever; and though we often speak of the “ good
old times,’’ and are half inclined to wish that our lot
had been cast with that of the patriarchs, these are
much more really the good times, when more is spread
out by a thousandfold for the delight of our intelli-
gence and the inspiration of our fancy ;— these,
moreover, are really the old times, for in those that are
wrongfully so called, the world, and man, and knowl-
edge, were not old, but very young

It is a striking and curious fact that very few seeds
are deleterious, and that those produced by plants
decidedly poisonous are, nevertheless, in many cases,
wholesomg, This is observable in the seeds of certain
plants of the gourd kind, the juices of which render
them quite unfit for human food, yet the seeds are
farinaceous and nutritious. As odor is the prime duty
of flowers, so does service for food seem the essential
attribute of fruits and seeds, and taken one with
another, in truth there are very few that can be called
traitorous. It is further remarkable that plants which
secrete poisonous matters do, in some instances, store

APRIL. 33

up the venom specially in their seeds. Of this we
have a conspicuous instance in the stone-fruit trees,
such as the peach, the nectarine, the cherry, and the
plum. The kernels of these are in eyery instance
reservoirs of the deadly poison called prussic acid,
whence the pungent and very peculiar flavor. Not
that the poison is present in such plenty as to be inju-
rious to the eater of a few seeds ; but there it is, stored
up by the plum for some mysterious purpose which
man does not yet understand. What a marvellous
number of such secrets are there! Books upon scien-
tific subjects teem with knowledge of every conceiv-
able variety, and amazingly minute and accurate, and
the author often seems to have exhausted the subject ;
yet directly we come into the presence of Nature her-
self, we find ourselves lost in perplexities, and with
ten thousand more enigmas than atoms of knowledge;
for, compared with the undiscovered, what we do know
is only like a few leaves from a great forest.. This is
one of the great rewards of the student of nature.
He discovers very soon that the most learned cannot
explain some of the simplest things that surround
him ; thus that there are innumerable fields which he
can traverse, if he will, as an original explorer, though
he may never be able to map them out. It is not
necessary that we should.acquire this power in order
to enjoy as we go along. There is more pleasure in
the pursuit than in the acquisition; and this, we may

34 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

be sure, is why Infinite Goodness has kept out of
man’s sight, so long as he is an inhabitant of this
present world, all those grand and lovely mysteries
and ultimate facts of which our actual knowledge is
only the apparel.

April is the period when the vital energy of seeds
is, in temperate countries, most vigorously called
forth. Then.the gardener deposits in the soil those
copious handfuls which in a-few weeks will show
themselves in wealth of young green vegetables, and
incipient flowers. Then, as if at the sonnd of a
trumpet, innumerable germs of the wildings of the
field and hedgerow awake to life, and beautiful is the
spectacle after a few days of sunny warmth, when the
first heralds of the season come crowding out of the
dark ground. Many of our little spring flowers run
through the whole history of life befure spring has
even commenced with many of the larger and tardy
kinds. Pretty little white-flowered cresses, that do
not care to grow taller than the breadth of one’s hand,
come out “in the broad acres of the cornfields in abso-
lute myriads ; others peep out of the chinks and crev-
ices of old walls, opening their square and pearly
blossoms, and ripening their miniature seed-pods,
while the stately plants in the garden are scarcely
aroused. Every season is, in fact, an epitome of all
seasons ; and ina single afternoon’s walk, when nature
is active, the history of the whole year is found enacted

APRIL. 35

by cne plant oranother. The gush of new life is most
marked, nevertheless, at the period we are consider-
ing, just as autumn is emphatically marked by ripe
results.

Those seeds in which two distinct halves form the
great mass of the contents, are proved by this struc-
ture to belong to one of the great primary classes into
which all flowering plants whatever are divisible.
This is a very interesting fact to take note of when at
work in the garden. While trimming our borders and
plucking up the weeds, it is impossible not to be
struck with the appearance of these little coupled
leaves, and in observing them we unconsciously
become familiar with one of the leading particulars of
vegetable structure. When the seed produces a pair
of seed-leaves, with an embryo, we know from that
little circumstance, trifling as it may appear in itself,
that should it grow to be a tree, it will have branches,
and boughs, and twigs, —not like a palm-tree, which
is destitute of these parts, but like an oak, or an elm,
ora birch. Further, we know that the leaves and the
flowers will both have a specific structure ; in a word,
that the whole idea of the tree will be marked by a
speciality of organic form. When, on the other hand,
the seed is formed like a grain of wheat, containing a
large quantity of free farina, and only one seed-leaf,
we know that the stem will be branchless, the leaves
and flowers, again, with aspeciality quite different from

36 IHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

that of the others, and that the second great primary
idea of botanic form is there beginning. There is
only one other kind of seed, that adverted to above,
as impalpably minute, and floating about in the air in
millions. This is the form produced by plants which,
like ferns, are destitute of genuine flowers. Internally,
‘they are different, — they sprout in a different manner ;
they indicate the third and last of the great-types of
the world of plants. Now look to the history of the
creation of trees and plants. Three distinct classes
are enumerated by the inspired writer, and learned
and pious men have been led from this circumstance
to believe that at the very gateway of Holy Writ
there is set forth the great principle of triplicity which
science in these latter ages has demonstrated. So
grandly do all things lock together! Almost the last
objects we should look to for a commentary on a
statement in Genesis are the sprouting seeds in April ;
yet in these seeds are announced differences in the
plants that rise from them, that every day makes more
and more*obvious, and which at last seem to bear out
the language that cannot err. \

.

CHAPTER IV.
LEAVES.

Tae development of the leaves of plants, is the-
happiest sight of spring. Flowers are rarely plentiful
enough to give expression to more than a very limited
space at once, and although many living creatures,
birds especially, make their renewed appearance at
this season, it is never with such power and with such
continuousness of effect. That which is true of the
little, is always, in that circumstance, representatively
true of the large, and thus, what becomes so obvious
after 2 moment’s thought in respect to the spring ver-
dure of our own country, is true in an extended sense
of the whole world, at least of every part of it which
produces conspicuous vegetation ;— 7 is the green
part of plants that gives expression to the landscape.
Of course there are the grand physiognomical features,
the mountains, rivers, waterfalls, and so forth; but
the living beauty and appeal of the landscape, come of
the particular kind of verdure that may pertain to it;
in England meadows and pastures, green all the year
round, —-in northern Europe innumerable pine and fir
trees, — along the shores of the Mediterranean, vast

4

38 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

numbers of the plants belonging to the great race
which includes rosemary and lavender, —in Central
America strange and uncouth forms of cactus, — at
the Cape of Good Hope, heaths and evergreens almost
countless. In no degree surprising, then, is it to find
a special season so beautifully characterized ; the idea
that gives lineaments to the whole world is that which
operates to make our April and May so sweet and re-
freshing.

There is considerable difference in the period at which
the leaves of trees and plants unfold. So considera-
ble is it that almanacs have frequently been construct-
ed in which the succession of days has been denoted
by the citation of the trees which on the days indicat-
ed. or thereabouts, expand their buds, and unfold their
leaves. Such an almanac can never be made a uni-
versal one, because differences of latitude, and diver-
sities of climate even in the same latitude, materially
aftect the time of commencement. But the sequence is
always the same, or pretty nearly so, reminding us of
what is observable in the sky. The stars, by other
persons, are from no point of view, that is at all dis-
tant from our own, seen in exactly the same places
that we see them; their places relatively io one another
are nevertheless, always identical. In one part of
England a tree may open its leaves by the lst of
March, and another, alongside of it, not till April 1.
In a different part the first-named tree may be a month

LEAVES. 39

later, and then the second will be a month later, like-
wise. One of the very earliest to expand its foliage,
is the balsam-poplar. The buds of this are covered
with aromatic resin, so that with the evolution of the
yellow tips, the air becomes loaded with fragrance,
and very delightful is it to perceive the presence of
the tree when going along quietly after dark, by the
richness of the odor that presently meets our nostrils,
The foliage when it first comes out, is remarkable for
its yellowness. This tint is so far from uncommon,
that it may be regarded as the normal and character-
istic color of very young foliage, and of such as has
not been exposed to the full influence of the solar
light; in the balsam-poplar, however, it is specially
noticeable. After a few days, when the warmth and
brightness of the sun’s rays have made themselves
felt, the leaves acquire the ordinary green hue. The
influence of light in thus giving color to vegetable
matter, is one of the most striking and beautiful opera-
tions that we can witness in surveying nature. Let
any fruit be half concealed by thick foliage, and it re-
mains pale. Ifa stone lie upon the lawn or anywhere
conceal the grass, on removing it, the space that was
covered is found to be destitute of true green. Ina
‘few days, however, all is changed ; the sun, like a
great magician, touches what was so pallid with his
beams of enchantment, and rich and glorious hues are
almost immediately called forth. Everywhere, in the

40 PHENOMENA OF PLANI-LIFE.

natural, no less than in the moral world, Light is the
great life-bringer. Without it, there is no permanent
and deep-lying beauty. Well may all nations, in all
ages, have called wisdom by the name of Light, error
and ignorance by the name of Darkness, and trans-
ferred the names of Light and Brightness, to whatever
is happy and holy.

After the balsam-poplar, and almost as soon, some-
times, perhaps, contemporaneously, come out the syca-
more and the horse-chestnut. In all these early trees
there is, however, a very noticeable difference in
promptitude ; that is to say, some individuals are
many days earlier than others, so that in the same
hedgerow or plantation, while many are only prepar-
ing, here and there, one will be seen in long advance.
The buds of the sycamore are shaped like almonds,
and externally pink; the leaves which they enclose,
are folded up like a lady’s fan, and gradually flatten
out, though it is several weeks before they become
fully developed. Contrariwise, those of the horse-
chestnut are the color of mahogany, and instead of be-
ing smooth and downy, are coated with viscid matter,
the purpose of which appears to be further protection
of the contents from the cold of winter. Here, again,
the young leaves are folded up like a lady’s fan; every
fold straight and symmetrical, while in the centre is
the rudiment of that noble cluster of flowers, which
by-and-by, is to help to light up this magnificent tree

LEAVES. 41

as if with an ancient alabaster lamp. Often, when I
have beon peering into these buds, with their simple
and beautiful prophecy, have I thought what a pretty
likeness they present to the opening heart and soul of
achild! First come forth the little green and inno-
cent thoughts and expressions, that excite a smile and
invite akiss. Presently, when we scarcely expect, we
hear some old-fashioned and quaint remark, that shows
what a marvellous power is at work in that little brain,
and that beautifully prefigures and pre-signifies the
glory of the intellect that will in due time be displayed
to view. Look next at that handsome white-beam,
covered with buds that, except near towns, are whiter
than those of any other native plant. We do not
call it white-beam tree, simply ‘‘ white-beam,’’ since
‘beam ’’ is an old word signifying tree, as illustrated
also in the name of the horn-beam. The whiteness is
given by abundant fine cottony down upon the under
surface, — the latter being the only one exposed to
view. Here, again, the primitive condition of the
leaf, is that of the lady’s fan. By this disposition of
the parts, the strong ribs are all thrown to the outside,
and the delicate tissues are protected within. There
is work for an entire spring, with those who are cu-
rious in nature’s mysteries, with the various methods
in which leaves are folded before they expand. They
are always plainly seen by cutting the bud crossways
with a sharp-edged knife. Sometimes, instead of being
4*

42 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

doubled up fan-wise, the leaf is rolled up like a scroll
of paper,— a plan varied by beginning from the edges,
or beginning from the centre. Sometimes the leaf is
rolled up from the apex downwards and inwards; and
sometimes it is doubled up in a curious way that can
be compared only to a succession of saddles, placed
one upon the other, and with an opposite set similarly
packed together. And these peculiarities are peculiar
to their own races, so that a single one will declare to
the experienced eye, almost as much as the fully
formed leaf. Cherry and plum trees may thus be dis-
tinguished from one another, before there is a speck
of either green or white on their dark-hued boughs.
The trees that come out next are the beech, the al-
der, and the lime. The buds of the beech resemble
long brown thorns. If we open one of them carefully,
the rudimentary leaves may be distinctly seen,— every
leaf folded fan-wise, and completely covered with
straight white hairs, that seem atoms of the finest silk.
The brow sheaths that cover them up are also ex-
ceedingly delicate ; the sheaths that lie next the leaves
are pink, and when the foliage is pretty. well opened,
present a charming contrast of colors. The silky
hairs also remain for along time, so that new beech
Iéaves may be identified by their presence, especially
as a large portion forma kind of fringe to the leaf,
after the manner of the eyelashes along the eyelid.
The fair green emerald light of a young wood is with-

LEAVES. 43

out parallel. No place is more lovely in spring, —
that is, as soon as the leaves are tolerably out; the
ground is always dry, and the grasses are usually of
slender kinds, quite different from those of the mead-
ows. It is the beech that is so celebrated ‘by the
poets, as the tree suited for carving letters and names
upon. The smooth bark adapts it for this purpose,
better than that of any other tree; and not only for
human and veritable writing or carving, but for a very
beautiful imitative writing, produced by a minute plant
of the lichen kind, called Opegrapha. This little plant
presents itself in the shape of dark and irregular lines,
so exactly simulating Hebrew or Arabic characters,
that we might almost fancy them to have been in-
scribed by some mortal penman. Where, among the
works and inventions of man, — his ingenious devices
and clever adaptations, — shall we find something in
which nature has not anticipated him? Nature, fresh
from the hand of God, is the storehouse at once of all
grand and beautiful ideas; and the Fine-Arts Exhibi-
tion, beforehand, of everything that human skill con-
trives.

After these come the oak and the ash, the former
with innumerable buds of an amber-brown, and by no
means remarkably large; the other, with buds of a
sooty-black color, and found chiefly towards the ex-
tremities of the twigs. The ash is one of the late
risers ; seldom green all over until June, and hence,

44 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

along with the mulberry, and some other trees that
are very slow, made by the ancients the emblem of
prudence. When they come in leaf, all danger of late
spring frosts is considered to be gone by, and the tree
is safe from damage. In looking for the buds of the
ash, we cannot fail to be struck (in most of the trees)
with the very odd appearance of the flowers. These,
while young, resemble clusters of ripe blackberries ;
afterwards they open out into branching sprays of a
peculiar blackish-olive color. In structure they are
the simplest known to occur among trees. The sta-
mens and the pistil (the parts which produce the
seed), that in other plants are protected so carefully,
here are left without any fence whatever; yet the
tree never fails to be covered plentifully with ripe
seed, as though independent of all asperities of weath-
er, and with power to triumph over every hindrance
and deficiency. These exceptions to the usual order
of things in nature, form one of its most striking char-
acteristics, and are more wonderful, it appears to me,
as an illustration of the Divine wisdom, than even the
method and symmetry with which they stand in such
powerful contrast. They show, as it were, with such
a grand independence, so self-containedly, that Infi-
nite Wisdom, though it has chosen to construct the
great mass of nature according to a given plan, is yet
quite us much at home with plans and arrangements
quite the opposite; and that what we suppose to be

LEAVES. 45

the necessities and positive requirements of things are
thé necessities only of the individuals in which we be-
hold them. Step a little further, and some other thing
dispenses with them, and yet flourishes, and is as
grand and comely in default as if in possession; and
that which we fancied to be the law, is shown to be
only one of the ways in which a higher and greater
law that we cannot reach to, is effectuated. The ap-
parent inconsistencies of nature all meet under some
higher synthesis of order which includes both the
common and usual thing, and that which to our dim
eyesight, seems the exception or the contravention.
The leaves of herbaceous plants make their appear-
ance according to a similarly definite sequence. We
do not notice them because they are so near the surface
of the ground, whereas the branches of the trees are el-
evated high inair. Sweet is the spectacle on a warm af-
ternoon in April, when we wander down by some trott-
ing burn, where early primroses, daffodils, and anem-
ones mix their fantasy ; where the first violets seem
blue eyes, and the lustrous coltsfolt glows in rays of
yellow gold ; sweet is it to note the little leaves of
a thousand summer-plants that, not behind time, for
it is their nature to take their turn, but that in all
promptitude are creeping out of the soil, spreading
like green lace among the taller ones, and making
green stars that have buds for the living centre.
The colors, too, are as varied as those of the leaves of

46 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

trees, and usually more Incid. While in this young
state, the leaves of herbaceous plants often supply re-
markably good illustrations of some parts of the inter-
nal structure. The tissues are open and succulent;
the general substance is more transparent than later
on, and the skin allows of our seeing those delicate
little openings, called ‘‘stomates,’”’ through which
moisture is transfused, and communication maintained
with the atmosphere. Leaves, in their composition,
are threefold. First, there is a delicate skeleton,
composed of fibres of woody matter, with sap and air-
vessels running alongside; the interstices of the skel-
eton or general framework, are filled up with green
pulp, formed of innumerable cells containing fluid;
and over the whole, on both sides of the leaf, is
spread a transparent skin, that serves to protect the
tender subjacent parts. In itself, the substance of
the leaf is colorless. The delicious and varied greens,
the deep-hued spots, the variegations, the bands,
lines, ang so forth, of different hues that it presents,
come wholly of the sap contained in the cells, which
assumes one color:or another when the sun shines
upon it, according to the matter secreted in it, by the
vital economy of the plant. The same is true of. the
petals of flowers. The tissue itself, is totally devoid
of color. The blue, scarlet, and yellow, come of the
deposit in the respective cells of fluid, competent to
acquire those tints when acted upon by the solar ray.

LEAVES. 47

How some cells should have power to secrete fluid
that shall take a definite color, and no other, is one of
those mysteries which at present seem quite beyond
our ken. The day may come when it will be known.
Happily nature is full of such enigmas. They allure
us onwards, for to the true student of nature, a mystery
is something to be unriddled, just as to the true worker
a“ difficulty ”’ is something that has to be surmounted.
It is well that we are surrounded by things seemingly
inscrutable. Enterprise and imagination are alike in-
vigorated by them. The amount of our consciousness
of the unfathomed, is a capital test of our condition,
for if we cease to feel the weight of mystery, we are
ceasing to improve. To be satisfied with things as
they seem to be, and to have no care or curiosity as
to their nature and significance, is to be stranded like
a ship upon the shore. Life is active in our own
souls in precisely the degree that we hear it uttering
itself in a thousand languages outside.

CHAPTER V.
THE STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS.

Txoues a flower, like a sea-shell, seems one of the
simplest things in nature, there are few objects that,
narrowly looked at, prove to be organized more elab-
orately. To produce the flower, is the aim and effort
of all the vital energies of the plant, from the moment
when it first creeps out of the earth as a tiny seedling.
For the sake of the flower the roots take up nourish-
ment from the soil, and the leaves, that wonderful
and invisible food with which the atmosphere is
charged on their behalf. For the sake of the flow-
er the plant struggles with the asperities of the
winter, and responds, in the unspoken gratitude of a
beautiful iife, to the sweet influences and sympathies
of the summer. All its energies and activities have
relation to the flower as their final issue, and well
may the petals be so lustrous, the odor so ravishing
and balmy.

The root, the stem and branches, and the foliage or
leaves of a plant, are concerned solely in the nutrition
of the individual; they prepare and consolidate the
material of which the general fabric is. composed ;

THE STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS. 4y

they maintain it in its position in the ground, and en-
able it to withstand the storm and tempest. The suc-
cessive and regular development of these parts, sea-
son after season, constitutes the growth of the plant;
and their unceasing self-employment in various vital
processes, gives us those hugh masses of woody fibre
that constitute timber; the innumerable secretions
that we extract from plants, in the form of oils, sugar,
starch, and so forth; those, also, that render the
bark and the leaves of different species valuable, eith-
er to the physician, when he would prescribe medi-
cine, or to the dyer, when he would give color to the
products of the loom. The functions of these parts
—the root, stem, and leaves — are thus purely ofa
local or personal kind; they have no direct relation
to the perpetuating of the plant, and hence they are
distinguished by botanists under the name of ‘‘ nutri-
tive.’”’? Very different are the functions and the pur-
poses of the flower. Here, instead of the aim and ex-
penditure being concentrated to the well-being of the
‘individual, the design has reference to the race. The
flower is produced, in other words, not so much for
the good of the plant which it so much ornaments, as
for the sake of the species; and thus, derivatively,
for the beauty and verdure of the earth. Hence the
parts of which it is composed are technically distin-
guished as ‘‘reproductive.”’ All plants die some
time. Every living thing has its lease of existence.
5

50 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

Some forms run through their little span in a few
weeks, perhaps in a few days; others endure for
months, years, ages; yea, scores of ages, as happens
with those gigantic American trees that seem appoint-
ed to watch the rise and fall of nations; but all ap-
pear to have a definite period assigned to them, or at
all events, a maximum of perfection, after attaining
which they decay with less or greater quickness.
This is the primary reason why flowers exist. Since
plants die, as other things do, sooner or later, unless
there were special arrangements made for their re-
newal, the earth, in a few centuries at furthest, would
become bare of vegetation, and the surface be like
those dreary plains of sand in northern Africa, which
a fanciful author thinks are the exhausted seats of the
world’s first life. Itis not that the plant has a lease
like that which the landlord determines with his ten-
ant. Such is not the case either, with the lease of
life in animals. The idea of the lease in both classes
of nature, is that of a certain relative length of lifc,
which may be abridged or extended according to cir-
cumstances, but the term of which is as certainly
fixed, as that of the summer, which may be cut short
by cold rains and early frosts, or last with a calm,
sweet glow of warmth and lovely hues, till it is time
almost, to think of Christmas. Coming to this inevi-
table termination, seeds must be produced in order
that a new generation shall arise; the seed is the

THE STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS. 51

product of the flower, and the flower is thus the fore-
runner, and at the same moment, the repairer, of de-
cay.

This matter of the lease of life, is full of pleasing
suggestions, and involves the consideration of innu-
merable facts. It is worth noting that in plants, as
in man, life consists of three great periods, two of
which, the first and last, God keeps in His own hands,
disposing them after His own wisdom, while the third
or intermediate one, is left for man to deal with, or at
least codperatiyely, The first period is infancy and
youth, which cannot be abided in by any man, or how
many would stay there forever! The last is old age,
when, having reached the crest of the mountain, and
the valley of the dark shadow lies dimly below, with
all our effort we cannot help sliding thither. The
middle one is that glorious period, when, full in stat-
ure, and enriched with all good gifts, we feel and
relish the splendors of life ; — this one it is allotted us
to lengthen out almost as we please, carrying fresh-
ness of thought and feeling, which are youth, past as
as many birthdays as suffice to see a chestnut grow
from a sapling into a forest patrician. This middle
period every man holds comparatively in his own
pewer. Giving his soul to wisdom and manly affec-
tions, he finds therein the elixir vite that the alche-
mists sought in vain; and though the third and con-
cluding period comes to him not less certainly than to
all others, it is brief and serene.

52 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

Flowers, then, are reproductive or seed-producing
apparatus. They are ordinarily so lovely, so varied,
so rich, so alluring, because of the dignity of their
office. That in nature which has noble duties as-
signed it, is always embellished in a way that befits
the noble purpose. Men do just the same when they
place a crown of gold and a purple robe upon that one
of themselves that they choose for king. To maintain
the living flow of beauty of tree and flower upon the
earth, isas much grander than simply to grow stout
and leafy, as it is for a man to seek to delight and il-
luminate those around him, (so far as the munificence
of God gives power,) instead of simply seeking his
own profit. This is recognized accordingly in the
forms of flowers, so exquisitely symmetrical in the
delicacy of their tints, and in their lavish profusion,
all of which become characteristics of honor and dig-
nity to the plant, and mark the period of its highest
value in return. Taking the flower to pieces, it is
found, when in its most perfectly developed condition,
to consist of four distinct sets of parts, every one of
which has its own especial province. Look at a rose-
bud when just about to open, and it is wholly green.
The green portion is the ‘‘calyx,”’ or chalice, enclosing
everything else, falling back when the contents are
ready to burst forth, and remaining usually till the
seed is ripe, though sometimes cast to the ground.
It is a beautiful sight when the component pieces of

THE STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS. 53

the calyx begin to separate, opening like the sweet,
soft eyelids of a little child, when it looks forth again
after the peace of its scarcely-breathing slumber.
With the first slight push from within, the green sep-
arates, and a line of crimson gleams in the space; by
degrees the fissure widens, and in due time, like the
opening of the portals of some glorious temple, all is
thrown back, and the petals stream out in their match-
less hue. The same with the poppy. Two concave
leaves clasp the inner secrets in their green embrace,
and the bud hangs with its head to the earth until all
is ready. Then the line of crimson announces what
is coming, and great scarlet petals, that flaunt like
banners, are disclosed. Similarly the peony unpacks
great round green balls, and every other plant its pe-
culiar cluster or bunch, — everything creeping out of
this ‘‘ calyx,’’ in the first place, and seldom discard-
ing it, though the special utility has ceased. Some-
times the calyx, instead of being green, is highly col-
ored, emulating the most dainty parts of the interior
of the fower. This happens in the common fuchsia,
which has a calyx of four pieces, coherent by their
edges, so as to form an oval and crimson bag, which
yields to the pressure of the fingers. In other plants,
again, the calyx is extremely minute, so small as to
be incapable of giving adequate protection ;— then
the protective purpose is subserved by special leafy
coverings called “bracts,” as we may plainly see in
5*

54 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

the great purple and cone-like buds of the rhododen-
dron, which are built up wholly of bracts and flowers
within.

Next in order of position to the calyx, come the

“petals.”

These are the parts which it is usual to
call the ‘‘leaves’’ of the flower; but the term is in-
correct. Leaves are the green organs which prepare
the food of the plant, and in the aggregate constitute
the foliage. These colored portions are of totally dif-
ferent function, and in texture and substance, are also
quite unlike. They should no more be called
‘‘leaves,’’ than fingers should be called toes, but
always be denominated by their special name of
‘‘petals.’’ Collectively they constitute the ‘‘corol-
la,” literally the little crown, ¢. e. as signifying that
the expansion of the flower is like the placing of the
diadem on the brows of a monarch. There may be a
literal truthfulness in the name as well, depending on
‘the resemblance of the circular cup, found in certain
descriptiogs of flowers, to the golden circlet that
forms the essential portion of a crown or coronet.
But names such as these have generally an inner and
higher meaning. They were imposed by men in the
beginning from a better ground than simple compari-
son; they sprang from that intuitive perception of
the original harmonies of things, in which all the best
and most living part of language, finds its begininng
and its explanation. The corolla, like the calyx, is sim-

THE STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS. 55

ply protective, or, at all events, only auxiliary to the
main intent. Just as the calyx wraps up all that lies
interior to it, so do the petals enfold still more inte-
rior parts, those, namely, which are directly concerned
in preparing the seed, and which botanists call the.
stamens and the pistil. The pistil is that slender column
in the very heart of the flower, which has for its ped-
estal the rudimentary seed-pod ; the stamens are the
delicate pillars which stand around it, every one of
them tipped with a little bead-like head. Both parts
vary considerably in number and size. Sometimes
there is but a single stamen ; sometimes there are not
less than five hundred stamens, as happens in the
Rose-of-Sharon. The same is the case with the pis-
tils, which vary in number from one, which is most
usual, up to a hundred or more, as in the strawberry.
These two sets of organs, by their codperation, give
origin to the seed. The rudiment of the latter is con-
tained in the ovary, which forms the base of the pis-
til; the stamens, for their part, discharge a fine pow-
der, called the pollen, which being received upon the
upper extremity of the pistil, thence has its virtue
conveyed downwards into the ovary, and so commu-
nicated to the potential seed. Unless this process be
effectuated, the rudiments of the seed undergo no
change. They never swell in the slightest degree,
remaining mere shells, and unless some portion of the
ovules become fertilized, the whole of the ovary gen-

56 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

erally withers away, and drops to the ground. Ovules
that have not been fertilized, are often found side by
side with others that. have grown into perfect seeds,
in the core of the apple, and in the pod of the com-
mon green pea supplied by the kitchen garden. To
promote this wonderful process, and to insure its
grand results, as far as possible, the most beautiful
contrivances are made use of. If the flower be pen-
dulous, the pistil is longer than the stamens, so that
the fertilizing pollen, in its fall by gravitation towards
the earth, shall be captured, and forced to accomplish
its proper design ; if the flower grow erect, the sta-
mens are the longer parts, again that by gravitation
their pollen may fall upon the crown of the pistil.
While the process of fertilization is going on, the
flower is apt to close at night; and when rain begins
to fall, so that cold and wet may do no injury, the
petals frequently draw together as if it were sunset,
and form a natural pent-house over the centre. Let
the sun shine bright and warm, and the petals spread
out widely, forming mirrors and reflectors which cast
back the light and warmth upon the delicate appara-
tus in the centre. Every change in the condition of
the air and sky, is anticipated in the plan and the
economy of the several parts, so that every possible
advantage may be taken of what is favorable, and all
adverse conditions be promptly guarded against.
Many flowers, it is true, are so constructed as to be

THE STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS. 57

incapable of self-defence. These, however, are gener-
ally of a form that is already a sufficient security, or,
they are so poised upon the stalk that the wind sways
them round, and instead of closing, they are able to
turn away their faces. So beautiful and ingenious
are the expedients that allure our interest at every

- step! All this, moreover, is a part of the vesture of
the ‘‘ grass of the field;’’ for the apparel of the little
things of nature, whether it be lily or speedwell, prim-
rose or golden loose-strife, that we contemplate, con-
sists not only in the substance; it lies as much in
their methods of life, and in the innumerable designs
for their prosperity which we behold thus effectuated,
and ‘‘if God so clothe ”? them with all tenderness of
care, ah me! may the teaching not be lost!

CHAPTER VI.
FLOWERLESS PLANTS.

Waite plants, in their higher grades of develop-
ment, are ornamented with those beautiful instruments
of selfperpetuation termed flowers, others, which
compose the lower grades, instead of being propa-
gated by the agency of calyx and corolla, stamens
and pistil, are in a special and popular sense flowerless.
No plant is absolutely destitute of the means of repro-
ducing itself; nor does any plant fail to give illustra-
tion of that wonderful twofold energy of nature which
culminates in man and woman. It is true, neverthe-
less, that many vast tribes and races of plants,
including many forms of considerable bulk and alti-
tude, never present anything to our eyes (so long, at
least, as unassisted by a microscope) that can legit-
mately be called a flower; while others, though they
anticipate the idea of the flower, and in the most
exquisite manner, do so rather in symbol than in
similarity of parts and organs. Such are the lovely
plants everywhere so much admired and assiduously
cultivated under the name of Ferns; such, too, are

FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 59

sea-weeds ; such, again, are mosses, and many other
little plants, the pigmies of their world, passed over
by incurious eyes, and uncared for by any save the
botanist, but capable of supplying inexhaustible de-
light, and this at every season of the year. When
the survey of large and showy plants has been ina
measure completed, a man may go to these little
flowerless plants, as into a totally new realm, begin
life over again, — find that the tender ministrations of
the common things of nature, even in these their most
attenuated forms, are, after the love of wisdom and
goodness, the true elixir vite; and discover that
through their aid the surprises and wonder of the
child may be renewed to him over and over again; and
the more delightfully because the experience of possi-
bly half a lifetime has supplied knowledge that renders
the new facts no longer mysteries, but insights. What
more exquisite, in early spring, than the spectacle of
the young uncurling ferns, rising out of the earth in
little coils of spongy verdure, densely clothed with
brown scales, day by day taller, day by day unrolling
more and.more, till by and by they present the figure
of a bishop’s crozier, or the crook of a shepherd ?

By the time that the sweet dog-rose flings out its
scented cups, these coils have turned into broad, flat
leaves, often with innumerable feather-like segments,
but for flowers we look in vain: autumn, even another
season, does not reward our expectation. Instead of.

60 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

o

flowers, the ferns produce bodies analogous only to
flowers, and these are originated, usually, upon the
under surface of the leaf, which they bestrew in the
shape of little spangles, or embellish with broad brown
furry bars. Sometimes these curious bodies, instead
of being scattered upon the under surface, are disposed
along the edge of the leaf, when they form a miniature
braid. The particular mode of their dispersion supplies
the best means of distinguishing the various kinds of
ferns; for, in ferns, as everywhere else in nature, real
resemblance depends not upon superficial but upon
deep-seated characteristics, and we should make great
mistakes if we relied upon mere outline. Outline in
ferns is usually only like apparel in human beings,
which, though in some cases suggestive and even
conclusive, in others may lead us astray and perhaps
into peril. In the shield-fern, the seed-spangles are
of a deep purplish-lead color, and disposed in double
lines up the centre of its countless leaflets; in the
Oreopteris, or mountain-fern, the spangles run like
yellow beads around the edge, following every inden-
tation and delicate curve, just as the little waves, at
high water, find their way into every creek, and kiss
the great round pebbles they are not strong enough to
encircle. Contrariwise, in the hart’s-tongue, instead
of spangles, we have long lines of tawny felt, that
strike obliquely from the mid-vein of the leaf away to
the edge; and in the maiden-hair, delicate little semi-

FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 61

circles, that break the otherwise even margin, and
remind us of the undulated edges of certain sea-shells.
These masses of seed-material, whatever their shape
and position, are technically termed the sori, and
always spoken of in the plural. A separate one, did
we care to remove or isolate it, would be a sorus.
Examined with a tolerable microscope, every ‘‘ sorus”’
is found to consist of a heap of minute boxes, per-
fectly globular in form, and capable of opening into
two halves, after the manner of a bivalve, such as the
cockle. The opening is not effected, however, by means
of a hinge, but by means of an elastic spring, which is
curved half way round it while the box is young, but
subsequently straightens itself, and forces the box open.
The boxes, technically termed the ‘‘ thece,’’ contain
quantities of golden-colored atoms; these are shaken
out when the ‘“‘ thecee”’ burst, and of their growth come
in due time the new fern-plants. Yet they are not
seeds, any more than the sori are flowers! Ferns are,
in respect of their reproduction, elaborately unique.
No plants exhibit so truly wonderful an economy ;
they make imagination true, alike in their diversity,
and in the mysteries of their life; and it seems but
fitting in so strangely-beautiful arace, that they should
be contemporaneous nearly with Time, so far as regis-
tered by fossils and by living nature. For in the
“great stone. book’’ of nature, as the crust of the
earth has well been designated, few records of the
6

62 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

infinite past carry the mind back to periods prior to
those when ferns existed, or, at all events, plants of
the fern idea; and in the green lace of their delicate
leaves, reappearing so sweetly year by year, now,
after a thousand ages of heritage of perfect beauty,
they are youthful and fresh as ever, and seem to
announce themselves immortal. Ferns existed in the
earliest ages of the world’s history, long before man
was ushered upon the scene. Their race has seen the
rise and fall of empires, the birth and decease of
countless generations. Like the stars, in whose self-
same light they grew and flourished, they seem an
integral part of the glorious system we call our own,
and in the middle of which we live. I do not know a
more grand‘and exalting thought in connection with
external nature than when on a fair summer’s evening,
in a country lane, while it is yet too light for the stars,
but the planets peer forth like loving eyes, we look
at these green ferns, so old and yet so young, then at
those ‘‘ diamonds in the sky,’’ so young and yet so
old, new-born and yet so ancient, and compare their
antiquity, pondering that before man was, that same
soft lustre came streaming down on their ancestry of
verdure, and that when our little lives have run their
length, and we have dropped back into the dust of moth-
er earth, still will stream hitherward that inextinguish-
able brightness, still will these tender leaves rejoice in
their innocent life. It is when in the silent contem-

FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 63

plation of these grand and awful things that, perhaps
more powerfully than at any other time, we hear, as
the little lad in the temple heard the voice, while Eli
slept, — ‘‘ Have I been so long with thee, Philip, and
thou hast not known me?’’ These things seem more-
over to waken up the reverent soul more acutely than
indoor didactics, and therefore is it good to seek their
presence, not neglecting temporal and immediate
duties and responsibilities, but in the intervals of
duty going amid them and beneath them to be re-
freshed. Fossil ferns, of the kind referred to, are
supplied by every coal-pit, —not from that portion
of the coal which is best adapted for fuel, but from
the shaly portions which lie externally to it.
Returning to the seeming secds of ferns, which, as
we have said, are yet not their seeds, we have next to
ask, what then are they? If we sprinkle them upon
a piece of tile, and keep the surface moistened, in due
time the seed-like atom begins to grow, and a minute
green plate is developed. Underneath and upon the
edges of this are produced organs that execute the
functions of stamens and pistil ; an actual yverm is
ripened almost in the substance of the little plate, and
from this arises the new fern. The sorus on the orig-
inal fern-leaf is thus a branch in miniature; every
theca in its turn is a cluster or bunch of flower-buds
in miniature, the theca itself bearing some analogy to
the white sheath that encloses the flower-buds of a

64 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

uarcissus; while every seed-like body is in reality a
representative flower-bud, which only expands after
being cast away from the parent, and develops the
true seed at a distance from it. This wonderful
process, it may be well to repeat, is unique among
plants, so far at least as known, and gives the race a
most striking individuality.

Next in familiarity to the ferns are the Mosses, —
those delicate little velvety or lace-like plants that
spread themselves over the bark of old trees, on moist
rocks, upon hedge-banks, on old cottage-roofs, espe-
pecially if composed of thatch, — that grow, in fact,
in almost every habitat that can support life. The
flowers of these, though extremely minute, can be
made out much more readily than those of ferns.
While the plant still seems no more than a tuft of
minute leaves, deep down amid the recesses of the
foliage there are developed tiny organs analogous to
stamens and pistil; the latter, on being fertilized, is
elevated upon a stalk as fine as hair, and then we get
those pretty little capsules, fat and green, or ruddy
and half pendulous, that show so conspicuously to the
observant eye in early spring. They are more like
choice flowers than like seed-pods, and are so organ-
ized as to exhibit some of the phenomena that pertain
to the very highest races of plants. The rim of the
capsule is set round, for instance, with delicate and
movable rays, resembling the white border of a daisy,

FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 65

and exhibiting the same kind of sensitiveness to
changes of the atmosphere, —that is to say, closing
when it is moist and clouded, opening out flat when
the sun shines and the heaven’s breath smells woo-
ingly. The seeds are impalpably minute, and float in
the air, like the winged ones of thistles, but of course
invisibly. When carried or blown against any moist
and shady surface, they cling to it, and commence
active life, and in a little while make it seem as if a
coat of bright green paint had been overspread there.
Mosses, independently of the beauty of their little
capsules, are plants that abound in curious interest,
There is good reason'to believe that the plant referred
to under the name of the ‘‘hyssop that springeth out
of the wall,’’ was one of their number. Since hyssop,
properly so called, is neither an inhabitant of walls,
nor so remarkable for diminutiveness as to form nearly
so suitable a contrast to the cedar of Lebanon, it is
pretty certain, at all events, that the allusion is made
to something else ; and the positive arguments are all
in favor of its having been mosses that Solomon spoke
of. Mosses, like ivy and wall-flowers, consecrate
themselves to the ruin. The time-worn castle, the
roofless abbey, are favorite abodes with them. They
love also to grow in rural graveyards, and may often
be seen filling up the deep-cut letters of the epitaph.
They are too small for the posy or bouquet, —not
impressive enough for the flower-garden; they seem
6*

66 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

marked out by nature for elegant and sacred purposes
that shall be all their own, and these they never fail
to fulfil, Nature never forgets either her festivities
or her tender sympathies. When spring and summer
come, the chaplets are always ready, beautiful as
gladness, and dipped in odors ; when there is anything
sad or solemn, she is ready again, and with a smile
that gives a poetical side even to death.

Sea-weeds, those lovely and fragile forms tossed
upon the sands from the country of the mermaids, —
or, in their larger and stouter forms, hanging in black
tapestry from the water-beaten cliff, — sea-weeds,
again, are flowerless plants. Yet they reproduce
themselves as regularly as those that bear stamens
and pistil. Sea-weeds differ from all other plants in
the complete fusion of all their parts into an homo-
geneous mass. There is no distinction of root, stem,
and leaves; any and every portion is a miniature of
the whole. True, they hold fast to rocks, and beauti-
ful is the spectacle when the tide is at its full, and the
white-bubbled waves come lashing and surging, and
the long black thongs and branches, with their great
vesicles, float and toss in the water like a strong
swimmer in his merriment, secure all the while in
their living anchorage: but the attachment is still not
that of a root, but simply of a powerful adhesion. If
anything can be compared to foliage, it will be the
slender and thread-like portions; but the functions

FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 67

even of these are not such as pertain to proper leaves,
the plant taking up nutriment in every part alike.
The parts analogous to flowers are contained in
smaller vesicles, found chiefly near the extremities of
the branches. They are too delicate to be distinguished
without the aid of the microscope, but then excite the
liveliest astonishment, so lively and so novel are the
phenomena by which their energy is manifested.
Fresh water contains plants, of much the same general
character as the weeds of, the sea. These are usually
green,-never purple or rose-colored, like many of those
that live in salt water ; and their structure is in many
cases much more simple. Every pond, and stream,
and fountain pool contains abundance of light green
cloudy matter, which when carefully taken out and
diffused in a basin of water, is found to consist of thin
threads, finer than the finest silk. Examined with the
microscope these threads present the appearance of
necklaces, consisting of numerous oblong cells or
beads joined end to end. A very common species,
called by botanists Zygnéma, illustrates the process
of seed-production in the most striking manner. The
cells are filled with dark-colored granules, and as soon
as these are ready, the cells of adjacent threads unite
by their surfaces ; a passage is opened from one into
the other; the contents are all transfused; and the
cells that are made the receptacle of this commixture
become as it were the seed-pods. So marvellous are
the disclosures of the microscope |

68 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

It was said by La Place that certain discoverics in
mathematics had lengthened the life of-the astronomer,
by enabling him to realize new privileges and new
delights. As truly may it be said that the invention
of the microscope has lengthened the life of the phy-
siologist. It is more than foreign travel, —it takes us
not only into countries that we have read of, and seen
pictures of, but into realms peopled with undiscovered
wonder, and has the additional enchantment of bear-
ing us ever onwards, by making us feel that though
we can never get into the centre of things, we may
yet be always approaching nearer, and witnessing
new miracles. There is as much, perhaps vastly more,
in the infinite little for man to learn and to be charmed
with, as he may find, or than he can grasp, perhaps,
in the infinite great and distant. Man stands midway
between two worlds in more senses than one. If he
can look backwards and forwards as regards time, and
feel equidistant alike from beginning and end, so may
he, by the help of those wonderful instruments, the
telescope {nd the microscope, perceive himself to be
midway as to his place in nature.

CHAPTER VII.
FRUITS AND AUTUMNAL DAYS.

Tue fruit of a plant is the portion to the develop-
ment of which all activities have been dedicated. The
root, the leaf, the flower, have all wrought to the
furtherance of this grand intention ; and the nearer the
time has come for the appearance of the fruit, the more
beautiful and alluring has the aspect of the plant become.
There is in this a wonderful and most exquisite anal-
ogy with the history of animal life. What the fruit is
to the plant, offspring is to the creature; and hence
we find that it is towards pairing-time that birds
become vocal, and dressed with gayer plumage, and
that the sweet ingenuities of their little architecture
begin to show themselves in the hedges, beneath the
eaves of our houses, and in the innumerable quiet
places where nests and fledglings are supposed to be
secure, — too often, alas! the contrary. Hence, too,
we find that, at the corresponding period in their
lives, fishes become more brilliant, their tinted scales
gleaming with unaccustomed colors as the swift fins
push the water aside, and the sunshine falls on them
slantingly. Hence, too, we find that the insect, when

70 PIIFNOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

it is about to enter on the final stage of its chequered
life, and bequeathe a crowd of tiny eggs to the pro-
spective seasons,—we find, I say, that it then
assumes those glorious wings that have made the
butterfly the type with many a theologian of the new
state after the resurrection. The egg-state of the
insect is almost negative; in the grub or caterpillar
phase of its life few look on it except with disrelish ;
in the chrysalis phase it is again passive, and seems
to have dropped out of the ranks of living things.
This phase emerged from, and the wings assumed, or
rather disclosed, — for they were already in the chrys-
alis,-though imperfect, — the little creature mounts
into the air, chases every fancy that impels to another
flower, sips a little honey, sports with its gay com-
panions, and displays those exquisitely beautiful atti-
tudes that art feels glad to immortalize. All this is
premonitory of the pairing-time of the insect, which
is thus in close conformity, as to incidents and circum-
stances, with that of the bird; while both series of
events and beautiful spectacles correspond again with
those that are manifested in the plant when the period
approaches for the ripening of the seed, which is only
another name for the elaboration of the fruit. By the
time the plant begins to blossom, it has ordinarily
acquired its. perfect physiognomy, — not necessarily
the full stature it is capable of reaching, but it shows
the perfection of its general profile. The idea of the

FRUITS AND AUTUMNAL DAYS. 71

plant is there, though it may be only in miniature, as
happens with young forest-trees, and often with young
trees that are grown for their economic value in gar-
dens and orchards; for every species of plant has a
configuration of its own ;—is built, so to speak, upon
a definite and prescribed model, the dimensions of
which may be enlarged, and prodigiously so, as years
roll over the world, but which is never materially
departed from. The poplar, that when full grown
towers above most of the surrounding trees, shooting
up vertically, yet withal so unsociably, and giving the
same pleasant idea in the landscape that spires and
columns do in the view of a large town from the hill-
side, — this tree, in its youngest state, is a kind of
living photograph of its tallest ancestor, presenting
all the characters that in the mature one are merely
repeated, without being in any degree diversified.
This general figure and physiognomy are realized by
the time the plant begins to show its blossoms. The
latter seldom appear before, unless under some con-
straining influence that hurries the plant to early
death, as when it grows on some dry wayside, or on
some scorched and sunburnt cliff, whence every parti-
cle of moisture is rapidly evaporating, and then, it is
true, an effort is often made to produce a seed rather
than die childJess. For here, as in other ways, the
plant gives us a profound and beautiful lesson. It is
not dying that is dreadful, or to be looked on with

72 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

dismay, but dying without having lived, 7. e.
without having lived to some good purpose, however
slight, so that the best was done that could be. Plants
under cultivation are often reluctant to produce blos-
soms. Year after year they unfold abundance of green
leaves, and as “ foliage-plants,’? command our admi-
ration ; but we are never gratified with the sight of a
flower. The plan generally adopted with such plants
is to starve them in some way; checking the exube-
rance of growth, alarming them, as it were, with the
fear of being destroyed, when they forthwith make
efforts to produce flowers, so that they may leave at
least a representative of their race. From Mexico
was brought, a few years since, a magnificent plant,
named, in compliment to a celebrated French Admiral,
Bugainvillea, This is so unwilling to blossom, that in
our hothouses it often presents no more than a tapes-
try of dark-green leaves. The expedient that is said
to have answered best in the way of persuasion, is to
lay bare the roots, and bring one of the hot water
pipes in contact with them, whereby they are in a
degree dried up. Then the grand lilac clusters make
their appearance, every flower seeming a design in
muslin rather than the work of a plant.

While the physiognomy and general idea of the
plant are thus attained as an antecedent of the fruit,
the leaves also acquire their perfection. The young-
est leaves are often quite unlike those that come after-

FRUITS AND AUTUMNAL DAYS. 73

wards, just as certain features in the human face are
in infancy merely forehead and nose, and we have to
wait till the ’teens for their established shape. This
is very prettily marked in seedling trees, such as
the sycamore. The full-grown leaf is shaped like that
of the vine. Three great broad angles divide the
surface, and these are again distributed into smaller
angles. But while young, the leaf is simply oval and
attenuated, the angles not appearing till the tree is
many months old, —if tree it can be called before a
winter has passed over it. In other respects the
foliage of plants is often inferior while young, com-
pared with its condition when the flowers are about to
burst. When the flowers are first opening, the pecul-
iar properties and qualities of the leaves are also most
remarkable. If it be bitterness, or aroma, or adapt-
edness for use in medicine that characterizes the
leaves, this is the period when they should be col-
lected. Before the flowers appear, they are compar-
atively deficient ; in the old age of the plant they have
nothing to yield. Hence it may be observed that in
the herb markets, the great sheaves thither brought
of sanctuary, betony, blushwort, and a score of
others, are always loaded at one extremity with their
withered corollas. Hence, too, in districts where
there is great faith in herb-teas of different kinds,
plants valued for such service, and that reproduce
themselves annually from seed, in time become very
7

74 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE. —-

scarce and almost extinct. They are torn out of the
ground at the most critical time, and the seed that
should renew them when spring returns with its
encouraging showers, is forbidden to ripen., The
botanists who carry off handfuls of specimens as s0
many trophies of their explorations, have far less to
answer for than the herb-gatherers, who it would
scarcely be too severe to call the locusts of modern
ages.

Last in the order of preparation for the fruit comes
the glow and the grace of the flower. When this
makes its appearance, it is the aurora of the plant’s
fecundity, — much, it is true, may be repressed by
blight and chill, just as a heavenly morning-dawn in
early summer, that cheers the heart of the little lark,
is not seldom changed into cold and gray, by winds
that bring unwelcome clouds, — but the intent of the
flower is that fruit shall be its sequence. Therefore
the queenly and incomparable hues; therefore the
odors that seem breath inherited from Eden ; therefore
the forms and outlines before which the mathematician
is still a child. We might be sure that some great
event was near at hand, did experience not assure us
that fruit would follow all this outlay, since grandeur
of announcement in nature is always prophetic of
something opulent to follow. In nature, the herald’s
trumpet is never blown in idleness or sport. It is al-
ways an illustration, once over again, of the incompar-

FRUITS AND AUTUMNAL DAYS. 15

able veracity that belongs to every department of the
works of God, so long as unmarred by man. The si-
lent predictions of nature would be theme enough for
a great volume. The maturity of a man’s lifetime
would be well devoted to the record of them and to
their fulfilments, each one in turn,— text for a preach-
er, and theme for a Christian philosopher. Many
flowers, it is true, fail in their promise; but this is no
fault of the mechanism, —it is no fault in any shape.
Were every flower that opens to ripen its fruit, the
strain would be greater than the plant could bear;
and, as illustrated every summer in the flower-garden,
exuberance would be followed by slackness, perhaps
by total sterility. Therefore the exquisite taste and
wisdom, which in order not to use the Divine name
too frequently, men have agreedsto call ‘‘ Nature,’’ co-
operate in such a way that while the decoration shall
be all that the soul of man can desire in the shape of
beauty, a due proportion only shall be actually per-
mitted to serve the still higher purpose. We can
suppose what would be the condition of trees and
plants, were every individual to become fruitful, by
imagining what society would be, were every little
boy to become a Plato, and every little girl a Corinne.

The flowers gone by, the seed-pod makes its appear-
ance. This is no new thing. The seed was always
in the heart of the flower, as love in the heart of a
woman; it wants only sunshine to bring it ipto view.

76 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

i

And like the heart of a woman, it takes its coloring
again from that which environs it. Let it be shade,
and there is nothing but coldness and insipidity ; let
it be sunshine, and life leaps up as at the touch
of an enchanter. As said in a former paper, we
never see the actual beginnings of anything The
fruit that shines amid the foliage lay in the flower,
and was a rudiment when the petals were scarcely
' broken. Its appearance, like that of Spring, is only
the last of along series of preparationg. All plants
produce fruit of some kind or other, — not necessarily
eatable fruit, any more than every person talks and
acts so as to please and instruct. But in some shape
or other, last year, or this year, or next year, it is to
be found; and though it may not answer our ideas of
fruit, as founded on grapes and apples, it is still fruit
in the strict and proper sense. Acorns are the fruit
of the oak quite as truly as filberts are the fruit of
that well-known tree which, in its wild state, we call
the hazel. ‘‘ Acorn”? is literally ‘“‘ oak-fruit,’”’ ‘corn ”’
being no whore than a general term for fruit, — where-
fore we speak of fields of corn, as distinguished
from those which supply our tables with roots and
leaves. The fruit, in a word, is the ripened pistil of
the flower, comprehending both shell and contents.
Here, in England, we have an immense preponderance
of dry and inedible fruits. In the tropics, on the con-
trary, those adapted for human food are very numer-

FRUITS AND AUTUMNAL DAYS. V7

ous, and comprise forms and flowers to which cold
countries give no parallel. Such are the fruits of the.
thousand kinds of palm-tree, the custard-apple, the
bread-fruit, and the guava. Now and then these il-
lustrious exotics condescend to ripen their produce in
our hothouses, but it seldom acquires the flavor that
pertains to it in its native country. The skill of the
gardener can supply warmth, but it cannot bestow
light. ‘‘Let there be light,” is the beginning every-
where, both in the moral world and in the natural.
Wanting the clear, shining, and intense brightness of
the tropics, the mere enjoyment of artificial heat will
not suffice. Nor, for the matter of that, would light
suffice to ripen them without a due proportion of
warmth. The old story meets us everywhere. The
head’ and the heart, the intellect and the affections,
knowledge and good dispositions, — what are they,
deprived of their correlatives? Inside the fruit is the
seed. This is the last, grand, and crowning effort of
the plant’s existence; for in the seed lies wrapped
the future one. Perhaps a mere speck, yet capable of
unfolding by degrees, and absorbing from the earth
and atmosphere that marvellous sustenance which,
invisible to our eyes, shall yet be wrought into wood
and sap, and built into great boughs and branches,
till a living pillar is erected that shall withstand the
shocks of ages.
q*

78 PILENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE.

And thus we are brought round to the point from
which we started. Every ending is a beginning;
everything completed is a pedestal for something
then to be commenced. All things are forever striv-
ing to begin over again. We rise every morning
with new hopes, new desires, new resolves. Would
that our new beginnings were always as fully replen-
shed as that of the plant in its little seed !

THE OAK.

Trees constitute an order of nobility; for nature
has its aristocracy as well as mankind. If there be
‘ancient and noble ”’ families in a nation or a com-
munity, — still older, and inheriting yet more dignity,
are the families of living things by which man is en-
circled. He can claim no honor on the score of de-
scent or genealogy that is not already merited by some
patrician of the world of plants; and this not so much
because trees are the same to-day that they were in
the beginning, as by reason of their absolute excel-
lence, their serene and invulnerable perfection.

Trees are sanitary agents in the economy of the
world we live in. By the process of ‘ assimilation,’’
which means the abstraction of carbon from the at-
mosphere, in order that in due time, and through cer-
tain vital processes, it may be converted into wood
and other vegetable substances, —by the process of
‘‘assimilation,’’ we say, trees, through the medium of
their leaves, preserve the air in a condition fit for hu-
man breathing. Herbaceous vegetation greatly con-
tributes to this great end; but the result is mainly

80 TREES,

referable to arborescent plants, their size and extent
of leaf-surface being so prodigiously great, when com-
pared with that of the former kind. We little think
when we inhale the fresh air, and quaff it upon the
hiils, like so much invisible and aerial wine,. that its
purity and healthfulness come of the glorious trees.
But so it is. Nor have we merely the trees of our
own country to think of and be thankful to. The air
that we breathe in England to-day has been purified
for us perhaps a thousand miles away. If the wind
blow from the north, we may be grateful to the Scan-
dinavian birches; if from the west, it is quite possible
that the magnolias of North America may have helped
to strain it; if from the south, were it gifted with lan-
guage, we might hear a tale of Indian palms. Every
tree in nature makes itself felt in the good it does the
air,-—a beautiful return for the new loveliness it re-.
ceives when its branches and foliage are stirred and
fluttered by the breeze.

Trees supply man with every species of useful arti-
cle, whetfer of nourishment, or of clothing, or of
medicine, and with timber to construct dwellings, and
to build ships with, so that even the sea shall be a
highway. Not that any single kind is of utility so
multiform. Fruits are supplied by some, as the olive
and the fig, the cocoa-nut and the date; the delicate
inner bark of the paper-mulberry furnishes the inhabi-.
tants of the South Sea Islands with materials for their

THE OAK. 81

simple apparel; medicines are afforded by innumer-
able species, and ‘‘ wood ”’ and “‘ tree’”’ are words al-
most synonymous. It would be foolish and presump-
tuous to say that man could not exist without trees,
because, were there no such productions in exist-
ence, the Infinite Benevolence would supply his wants
through some other medium. But constituted as man
is, and established as Trees and their functions and
properties are, it is plain that the present exquisite
order and harmony of things in respect to man’s wel-
fare, are most intimately and inseparably identified
with trees. Thus, that when we would consider man
and his privileges, the amenities and the enjoyments -
that encircle life, the comforts and the ornaments of
his home, we cannot possibly do so, if we would give
all things their fair place, without keeping trees also
constantly before the mind.

‘Trees are indispensable to the picturesque. <A
great mountain, or an extended plain, may have
grandeur, though devoid of trees; and it is easy to
conceive of richly-cultivated valleys, covered with
crops of corn, or unrolling infinite reaches of green
pasture, and at the same time without a tree, except a
little one here and there, just sufficient to serve as a
landmark. But in the absence of trees, none of these
places could be picturesque, in the full and proper
sense of the word. The trees break the outlines;
they give variety of colors, movement also, and shad-

82 TREES.

ows, and touch the imagination with agreeable sense
of fruitfulness ; or if they be timber and forest-trees,
with the idea of nobleness and grandeur. They are
to the landscape what living and moving people are to
the street, or to the interior of the hall or temple, —
an element that may be dispensed with, but at the ex-
pense of the finest and most impressive influences.
We may be overpowered by the stern and solemn
grandeur of a treeless waste, especially if it be com-
posed of mountains; and the sensation is one that
gives a variety not unacceptable to our experiences of
external nature; but the scenes that come home most
closely to our sympathies, and that have a perennial
hold, are those that are enriched by the abundance of
their trees.

Poetry finds in trees no little of its sustenance.
From the most ancient poets downwards, all verses
that have immortality in them, abound more or less
with allusions to trees, finding in them either images
for the events, — both glad and sorrowful, — of human
life, or emblems, in their higher nature, of what per-
tains to the heart and mind. The “ Language of
Flowers ’’ would be incomplete did it not include the
‘Language of Trees,’’ since trees are adapted, by
their original and inalienable constitution, to serve as
metaphors for almost everything great and good, and
wise and beautiful, in human nature. Hence the

countless citations of trees in Holy Writ, wherein
4

THE OAK. 83

the cedar and the fir, the vine and the olive, the palm
and the fig, are a portion of the ordinary vocabulary,
—not mentioned arbitrarily, or as a sportive act of
the fancy, but on account of their being the absolute
representatives and pictured forms in the temporal
world of the high and sacred realities that belong to
the invisible and eternal.

Because of these admirable attributes and charac-
ters of trees, we purpose in this series of papers to
examine somewhat closely into their nature and life-
history, marking out the features and physiognomy of
such kinds as belong to our own island, and inquiring
into the specialities that give them their several places
in art and poetry. For a tree is not merely an oak, or
an ash, or an elm. It has qualities for the imagina-
tion and the heart, moving men in its own way, and
vindicating prerogatives that are peculiar to it. The
mind of that man grows up very differently who in
his youth is accustomed to contemplate oaks, than
that of him whose boyhood is spent near pines and
firs. Where evergreen trees prevail, and are a daily
spectacle, a very different frame of mind is induced
than exists where the branches are leafless throughout
the winter. As the stars and planets, from the inac-
cessible altitude of their sweet lustre, make the heart
great by the contemplation of them; so, after the
same manner, imposing and magnificent trees, whose
branches, when we go beneath, seem the clouds of a

84 TREES,

green heaven, have a power of ennobling and elevat-
ing the soul, such as all who have lived among such
are more or less clearly conscious of, and which is to-
tally impossible to little ones.

In England, the trees are all of the class called
“ exogenous,” that is to say, they have numerous and
spreading branches; the leaves, when held between
the eye and the light, are found to be marked in every
portion by a delicate network of green lines, techni-
cally called the ‘‘ veins;’’? and upon the outside of
the trunk there is bark, which can be removed like
the peel of an orange. When one of these exogenous
or branching trees is cut down, or if a branch be
lopped off, the exposed surface, on being smoothened
horizontally, shows elegant concentric circles, sur-
rounding a central point, which in young parts of the
tree indicates a column of living pith. The concen-
tric circles announce the age of the tree or branch,
which is just as many years old in that part as there
are rings, In its earliest stage, or while only in its
first season of growth, the stem of the seedling tree
consists only of pith and an enclosing skin. Woody
matter is gradually prepared, and this becomes depos-
ited in a layer between the pith and the skin, which
latter now assumes the solidity of bark; and should
the stem be cut through at Christmas, or at the end of
its first year, the first of these annual rings will be
plainly visible. Every successive year this process is

THE OAK. 85

repeated. With the opening of the leaves in spring
— for it is the leaves that really effect the work — the
preparation and deposit of a new layer of wood is
commenced, so that by the close of the second season
there are two layers; by the close of the third season,
three layers; and sc cn as long as the vital lease of
the tree endures. The bark is simultaneously re-
newed, enclosing a larger mass every year. This
mode of growth is prettily illustrated in the spreading
of the little wave-circles upon the surface of still
water. Standing on the margin of some lovely lake

or mere, and looking at the blue sky and the white
" clouds that are reflected in its clear bosom, how often
the fairy spectacle is broken in an instant by the wing
of some light bird that, skimming through the air, just
touches the surface and sweeps onwards. But the
effect of that touch is to cause circle after circle of
tiny wavelet to move away from the spot where the
touch was given, and as far as the eye can reach the
beautiful phenomenon is continued. Just like this
succession of wave-circles is that of the annual wood-
circles of a tree, only that on the water we have only
an evanescent effect, while in the tree there is new
substance and solidity. The mode of gowth and the
phenomena referred to are denoted by this word “‘ ex-
ogenous,”’ which is literally no more than ‘‘ expansion
outwards.’’ Very. different are the mode of growth
and the internal condition of the trees called ‘‘ endog-

: 8

86 TREES.

enous.”’? These show no distinction of bark, and wood,
and pith; they are destitute of branches (except in a
few very curious and exceptional instances); and
their leaves, which are inconceivably enormous to any
one who has never seen: leaves larger than those of
English trees, are produced only upon the summit of
the stem. They are chiefly represented in the illustri-
ous tropical productions known as palm-trees, — those
soul-moving emblems of the south and east, and in
England are only seen in large and costly conserva-
tories, where room can be afforded them to lift their
great green pride on high. Even then we only see
them as juveniles, no possible structure of glass being
competent to shelter them when full grown, except in
the case of some of the dwarfer kinds. It is among
the exogenous trees, accordingly, that in England we
find our delight. It is these which form the sweet and
solitary arcades of the forest; that are the homes or
the resting-places of the birds; that shelter us from
the storm, and temper the heat of the sun; whose
trunks are embossed with tender creepers of green
moss, or hidden by the activity of the innumerable
and ubiquitous ivy ;—it is these that are so lovely in
their youth, so venerable and patriarchal in their old
age; these that stand still in quiet dignity while we
talk of fourscore as a wonderful lifetime, and for
their own part watch the rise and fall even of nations.
For the nature of an exogenous tree being to expand

THE OAK. 87

and enlarge externally, there is of course no physical
limit to the diameter it may attain, or to the number
and massiveness of its boughs and branches, or to the
multiplication of its twigs and leaves; and should the
lease of life allowed it in the Divine economy be con-
siderable, as happens with certain kinds. of mimosa,
and with many of the pine and cedar kind, it may go
on growing and growing for ages, and after a thou-
sand years be still in the full vigor of its existence.
Hence it is that the grand scriptural image acquires
such richness and force — ‘‘ As the days of a tree are
the days of my people.’”’ Hundreds of trees are
standing at this moment in America, some in Califor-
nia, others in Brazil, that were alive when those words
were written, and with a grasp upon life and the earth
that seems to assure them a period of which they have
perhaps no more than passed the middle. England
possesses multitudes of endogenous plants, though no
endogenous érees. Lilies, grasses, rushes, are all
structurally of the same nature as the palm-trees,
and now and then they give us a pretty prototype of
the palm; but the beau idéal of the endogen, as said
before, belongs.to the equinoctial regions. It is a
proud and inspiring thought for us nevertheless, that
art and the skill of the gardener allow us the sight of
them. By virtue of our hothouses and conservatories,
we who live in this age are introduced to the vegeta-
tion of every part of the world, without the trouble or

88 TREES.

risk of departing either long or far from home. Eng-
land, which stands midway between extreme cold and
extreme heat, with a surface that embodies in minia-
ture every element and ingredient, except the volcano,
that gives variety and sublimity to the face of the
earth ; — England, through its art and science, is the
Exmsrtion of the whole world. We need but ask for
Saloon A, or Saloon B, and all that the heart can de-
sire is displayed to view. Kew; Chatsworth; if we
cross the Tweed, Edinburgh ; and Dublin, if we make
our way to the green isle, show collections of palms,
among other things, that amply inform us as to their
wonderful nature. In these glorious places we see
the tropical regions as in a concave mirror, or‘in a
stereoscope, with the added charm that all around us
is alive.

Foremost among British trees, alike in grandeur,
utility, length of life, and amplitude of association,
stands the Oak, — that famous production which even
in the days of Homer was a time-honored proverb for
strength and endurance. ‘‘Thou,’’ says one of his
heroes to a man who quailed, ‘‘art not made of the
oak of ancient story.’”’* In England this noble tree
is found under many different forms, the contour, the
endurance of the foliage, the figure of the leaf and
acorn, varying considerably more than the unobserv-
ant of minute particulars would ever suppose. All the

* Odyssey xix. 163.

THE OAK. 89

varieties are resalvable, however, into two principal
ones, and these two are so nearly connected by inter-
mediates, that it is probable the oak of old England is
after all very like a human face, — presented under in-
numerable profiles and complexions, but always and
everywhere the same good old-fashioned combination
of features that was possessed in the beginning. The
two principal forms are the wavy-leaved oak and the
flat-leaved, called respectively by men of science,
Quercus robur and Quercus sessiliflora. The former is
distinguished by its remarkably tortuous branches,
and the irregular disposition of the foliage, every leaf
lying in a different plane, and the whole presenting
an aspect of great massiveness. Leaf-stalk there is
scarcely any; the acorns, on the other hand, are
borne upon peduncles of several inches in length.
Individially, the leaves, as expressed in the name,
have a strong tendency to be wavy in their surface
and outline. The flat-leaved oak differs in its com-
pact form, and strong disposition to roundness; the
branches are more horizontal, the leaves lie in parallel
planes, and individually are flat, and with rather long
stalks. In spring, we may further observe that the
leaf-buds are larger ; and in autumn that the acorns
are shorter and broader than in the other, and that
they are almost or totally destitute of peduncles; if
present, the peduncles are stout, not slim and delicate
as in the wave-leaved. These are distinctions very
8*

90 TREES.

easily made out. To trace them is at once an agree-
able and instructive occupation for half an hour, when
we go into the country for a day’s enjoyment. Nor
does it end in the simple discrimination of two differ-
ent things; for the wave-leaved oak has the reputa-
tion of being a more excellent tree than the other,
while the flatleaved is considered better adapted to
excite ideas of the picturesque. A glorious spectacle
is that of the oak in the month of April, when its am-
ber-tinted buds stud the tree like so many jewels.
‘They do not open hurriedly, like those of the syca-
more or the horse-chestnut. From first to last, the
life of the oak seems characterized by placidity. It
lives so long that it can afford to be leisurely in all its
movements, and at every season alike expresses dig-
nity and calmness. In a little while, when the young
leaves are half-expanded, come the flowers, though
not such flowers as we use for bouquets. Nature has
other ways of fashioning flowers than after the model
of the rose or lily. To note them is one of the great
rewards and charms of Botany, — which does not
mean calling plants by Latin names, but exploring the
wonderful nature of their various parts, and how ex-
quisitely they are fitted for their several uses and des-
tinies, and then comparing them with other forms of
leaves and flowers, and discerning step by step that
nature is all one song, but coming forth in countless
tones, or rather like a grand Oratorio, where we never

THE OAK. © 91

have two parts exactly alike, yet everywhere repeti-
tion and reverberation to the ear that knows how to
listen. Flowers are not necessarily sumptuous, and
fragrant, and brilliant-hued in order to be flowers.
The idea of a flower implies simply an elegant mech-
anism for the production of seed, and that this be
large or small is of no more importance than that the
heavenly teachings should be printed in one kind of
type or another. It is worthy of note also that the
great timber-trees of the North are remarkable, as a
rule, for the insignificance of their flowers. The
short-lived vegetation of the field and garden seems
decked with its sweet flower-brightness in compensa-
tion. Where our hearts are to be lifted up in admira-
tion of strength and patriarchal majesty, the allure-
ment of flowers can be dispensed with. Those of the
oak, as said above, make their appearance contempora-
neously with the young leaves, and under two differ-
ent forms. First, there are innumerable yellowish
tufts and fringes depending from near the extremities
of the twigs; among them are the tips of the rudi-
ments of the future acorns, scarcely larger than the
head of a pin, and of a deep red color. .

The oak is thus one of the trees in which the dis-
‘tinction of sex is strongly marked. All plants ex-
press, in some way or other, the omnipresence in or-
ganic nature of masculine and feminine. But it is not
always palpable to the eye. Some philosophers con-

92 TREES .

sider that where it is most plainly shown, we have a
nearer step towards perfection of structure; and on
this ground regard the oak and its congeners as far
more noble in the scale of vegetable life even than
apple-trees or vines. Acorns would never be devel-
oped from the rudiments in question, were the tasselled
fringes not to codperate, and contrariwise the tasselled
fringes would yield no acorns. Summer aids the de-
velopment; then comes serene October, and the pretty
embossed cups, round as a bubble upon the water,
holding them up awhile, as a young mother holds up
her child, cast them to the earth in kindly largess.
But although the acorns may sprout where they fall,
none grow to be even saplings beneath the shade of
the parent. Only those that get carried to a little
distance become oaks. And this has been observed
to be largely through the instrumentality of squirrels.
So beautifully are the necessities of the various realms
of nature harmonized one to the other. The little
quadruped fulfils an instinct proper and needful to its
own e&istence, and in so doing, contributes to the
perpetuation of the tree.

Representatively, —that is, as viewed by the light
of poetry, which means, in turn, by the keenest in- |
sight of the mind, that penetrating below the surface,
and beholding the centres of things, brings out their
highest value, that is to say, their Significance, —rep-
resentatively, the oak is strength, endurance, and dig-

THE OAK. 93

nity, holding the same place among trees that the lion
does among animals, and the eagle among birds.
Hence we find it many times referred to in Scripture,
and always in connection with what is understood to
be permanent and enduring, — as when the tables of
the law are described as having been set up against
an oak, to signify that the law was given to last
forever. It would be a very trifling piece of informa-
tion for the dignity of Scripture to communicate, if it
were no more than the bare physical fact that the
tables were placed against an oak. Scripture always
means something, —it does not simply speak. It is
not a book of words, but of ideas, speaking for all
time ; which kind of language comes of the facts that
it records being not simply literal but representative.
It is literally true, without doubt, that the tables were
placed against an oak; it is no less true that an oak
was chosen because of its symbolic meaning for all
ages. The poetical character of the oak is beautifully
acknowledged again in the time-honored allusion to
the defenders of our country as ‘‘hearts-of-oak.’”’ No
one disputes the fact that our sailors are made of this
capital material; yet how absurd the statement, if
taken in any other light than that of poetry! This
shows that although much that holds the form and
outward show of poetry may be unmeaning and silly,
the inmost and true spirit of poetry finds a response
in universal human nature, and that its genuine lan-
guage never needs interpreting.