WINTER MEETING. 321 



perform all the functions of supply, repair, development and repro- 

 duction. The intelligence they manifest in searching for food is simply 

 wonderful, while the actions of climbing plants in search of supports 

 are equally strange. All these wonderful peculiarities of plants are 

 but little seen or appreciated. In fact, not one man in ten ever saw 

 the true roots of a tree, or knows that they are put forth in spring 

 simultaneously with the leaves and are shed with them in autumn. 



To make the farm attractive, show the child its attractions: how 

 plants know when there has been a store-house of food placed within 

 their reach, and will immediately turn their attention to it. Show how 

 each and every plant takes from the earth and atmosphere different 

 elementary substances, and how they are stored up for our use. Show 

 the child the plants' adaptation to the necessities of other living or- 

 ganisms in the localities where they are indigenous ; how that in every 

 locality the animal and plant support and sustain each other, and in 

 the end consume each other. The breath of the ox is the food of the 

 plant upon which he fattens. 



How interesting it is to watch the plant industries as they are 

 ■carried on side by side, each doing its own work wisely and well, and 

 without exciting in the least the envy of its neighbor, and without con- 

 tention or strife. We see the maple collecting saccharine juices; the 

 pine, rosin ; the poppy, opium ; the oak, tannin, and so on through the 

 list. In our gardens the aconite collects a deadly poison which it 

 stores up in its tubers, and by its side the potato gathers in starch for 

 the sustenance of man. The plant's adaptation to the soil and climate 

 in which it is to grow is one of the most beautiful and useful studies 

 for the old as well as the young. C. L. Allen. 



I could write such a beautiful poem 



About this summer day, 

 If my pen could catch the beauty 



On every leaf and spray, 

 And the music all about me 



Of brook and breeze and birds— 

 But the greatest poet living 



Cannot put them into words. 



If I only could write the color 



Of the lilac's tossing plumes, 

 And make you feel, in a sentence. 



The spell of its sweet perfumes ; 

 If my pen could paint the glory 



Of the blue and tender sky, 

 And the peace that crowns the mountains, 



My poem would never die! 



H— 21 



Ebbn E. Rexford. 



