190 JBotans 



look worn, Imngiy, and aweary from not following 

 the good custom of the family. 



In this chill}^ month of November the roots are 

 resting and sap has nearly ceased rising in the stems. 

 Now is the time to trim vines, trees, and shrubs, 

 when there shall be no plant strength wasted in 

 leakage. Nature here sets us an example ; her sharp 

 Avinds whistle through the forests and snap off twigs, 

 branches, dead pods, sometimes remorselessly taking 

 away great limbs. Pruned, bare, quiet, the vegetable 

 world looks as if it were dead. It is merely asleep. 

 Nature is the grand patroness of rest. 



" Blessed," said Sancho Panza, " be the man who 

 first invented sleep !" If ever there were such a 

 man, he was merely following in the Avake of good 

 mother nature, Avho not only decrees a daily sleep 

 for all living things, but in the matter of her plant 

 children a long seasonal rest as Avell. Even in the 

 tropics the vegetable world arrests its activities, has 

 its quiet time, although the name of that time is not 

 Avinter. 



What is that daily rest which nature gives to the 

 i:>lant? The sleep of plants is a study full of in- 

 terest. Among the plant motions, one is that of get- 

 ting ready for slumber. Touch a sensitive plant. 

 Wherever you touch it the plant seems to shrink, 

 the leaflets fold up in pairs, and the stem of the leaf 



