40 THE NATURE-STUDY OF PLANTS 
their longer periods of quiescence too. The Bluebell 
and many other spring plants, such as Snowdrops and 
Daffodils, take it in summer; whereas our trees and 
herbaceous perennials, such as the Oak and the 
Columbine, hibernate or slack off in winter. 
But I suppose that during the whole of the rest of 
life we never get so much sleep as when we are babies, 
and similarly in the vegetable world the infant—that 
is to say, the little plant that is to be found inside 
each seed—enjoys a period, sometimes longer and some 
times shorter, which one might almost call uninter- 
rupted repose, until germination starts. 
The Nature-student should therefore try to find 
out when the seeds of the plant he is working at 
ripen as well as the period that elapses before they 
germinate. 
He could obtain a great deal of information by 
sowing those of our common wildings as soon as they 
mature, recording accurately the date of harvesting 
and sowing, as well as of the appearance of the 
seedlings above ground; and here I may as well say 
that if he wishes to obtain results of really scientific 
“value he must take every precaution that his experi- 
ments be made under conditions which in all respects 
approximate as closely as possible to the natural ones. 
In Nature seeds seldom germinate on bare soil, 
and it is therefore wise to cover the earth, after they 
are sown, with a little moss or stonecrop, which will 
help matters in more ways than one, especially if 
we use pots for our experiments. 
We have, then, found so far that the essentials of 
life are pretty much the same for all living things, and 
I will now very briefly compare our own with that of 
a plant for the five Factors which we have noticed. 
