A TOURIST FROM NEPTUNE 



all plants are at work ; they have periods of rest which 

 correspond to our sleep, but during their ordinary working 

 hours they never slacken off, but continue vigorously active. 



The life of man is so short that it is difficult to realize all 

 that is being done by the world of plants. It is necessary to get 

 beyond our human ideas of time. That is most conveniently 

 done by considering how our plant world would strike an 

 inhabitant of the planet Neptune. Our theoretical Neptunian 

 would be accustomed to a year of 60,127 days (164 of our 

 years) ; we will suppose that three of our years are a Nep- 

 tunian week, and that ten of our days are about three-quarters 

 of a Neptunian hour, whilst two earth-hours would be a 

 minute to him. 



If such a being were to observe our earth, he would be 

 astonished at the rapidity of our vegetable world. The buds 

 would seem to him to swell visibly ; in the course of an hour 

 or two, the bare boughs of the trees would clothe themselves 

 with the luxuriant greenery of midsummer. Hops would 

 fly round and round their poles, climbing at the rate of a 

 foot a minute. Bare places, such as the gravel heaps near 

 a sandpit, or the bare railroad tracks at a siding, would be 

 perhaps in one week entirely covered by rich grass and wild 

 flowers. In six Neptunian months a forest of graceful 

 larches would spring up to a height of seventy or eighty feet. 



So that, if one thinks Neptunially, the activity of plants 

 can be easily realized. 



The truth is that we are so familiar with common annual 

 events, such as the regular harvest every year, that we never 

 seem to realize what it means. There are some 1,400,000,000 

 human beings on the earth to-day, and they entirely depend 

 on the work done every year by cultivated and wild plants. 



Even in one of the least agricultural of all civilized 



IS 



