XII] THE FALLING LEAF. 177 
of her agents to work to bring them back again into 
her laboratory. It will take some months to do this, 
but she will not be idle in the meantime; she has 
always plenty of material in her magazines. She 
wants them first to protect the seeds and plants from 
- that energetic servant of hers, the frost. Then they 
are attacked by various beetles and other insects, and 
gorgeous toadstools and other forms of fungi prey 
upon them; then the frost comes and helps, and 
between them all they break up the tissues and 
fibres, and even the very cells, of the leaf. And the 
rain and dew, and the melting snow, carry the par- 
ticles slowly down into her stores ready for her use. 
And from these remains she takes numbers of 
beautiful crystals of phosphate and oxalate of lime, | 
and phosphoric and sulphuric acids; she also finds 
many other substances there which she carefully 
takes, and sends them through the tiny rootlets of 
‘the trees and plants into the big roots and up into 
the stems and branches. And here she forms them 
again into leaf-buds and flower-buds. And the wind 
and rain, the sun and dew, help them and bring them 
fresh substances again, and the buds expand into leaf 
and flower. 
And so they go on, never stopping; for though in 
the cold, cheerless winter, when Nature herself seems 
gone to sleep, it is only apparently so, for she is still 
at work—hard at work in her workshops preparing 
the buds and blossoms for the coming spring. And 
then we see the value of these crystals from the dead 
leaves, in the beautiful silken flowers of the Crocus, 
the bright yellow blooms of the Cowslip and Prim- 
M 
