liO MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



Leaves by the millions on millions are ever busy in ex- 

 tracting the carbonic acid gas from the atmosphere, chang- 

 ing what would be a noxious vapor to us, out from our air, 

 into the succulent greenness of their own life and the solid 

 woody fiber of structural development. 



Consider the growths of the field ! Their unselfishness. 

 The leaf is the real life of the field-growth. Roots are nec- 

 essary of course. And roots draw up nourishment and s;ip 

 from the soil. But the botanist will tell you how the leaf 

 is the real life. That in the ribs and veins and jointures 

 of the leaf is a miniature conformation of its own tree : and 

 that from it he can divine and reconstruct the tree, as can 

 the anatomist the animal skeleton from the bone. The leaf 

 is lungs and stomach both for the plant. Buds are convoluted 

 leaves. Blossoms and flowers are leaves of finer texture 

 and brighter brilliancy. The branch and trunk of woody 

 fiber is leaves, pressed, concentrated, modified, transmuted. 

 Then the fruit is the arrestment of such leafy growth, and 

 its metamorphosis from a vigorous outputting branch into 

 a rounded juicy pulp. Now bud and blossom, fruit and 

 seed, look to the begetting and sustentation of another life 

 than the plant's own. In the vegetative adding of woody 

 fiber it would be giving to its own growth. What a strik- 

 ing lesson of unselfishness. And proclaimed wherever 

 there are blossomings, and flowerings and fruits. These 

 have come at cost to the plant of giving up its own Growth. 

 It has died to itself that it might live for others. Every 

 palatable fruit it has provided for man has grown from its 

 gift of self-sacrifice. Every bud and seed it has furnished 

 for another individual of its species have come from the very 

 sap blood of its existence necessitating the cutting off of 

 its own vegetative development. See in the innumerable 

 growth of the vegetable kingdom therefore the very em- 

 bodiment of unselfishness which is the life and crown of 

 true religion. And often and often the plant dies its death 

 of self-sacrifice in the act of giving unselfishly blossom and 

 flower and seed for another's life. 



