Provisions for Life, 5 1 



bird with patient watching warms to life the tgg 

 within the nest. But when the sun has quickened 

 life, the office of the earth has but just begun, as 

 the work of the mother bird begins in earnest when 

 the hungry brood call for food. 



The quickening of the thousand forms of life, 

 from bud and root and seed seems the signal to the 

 earth for renewed activities on every side to supply 

 them with the means of growth. In the soil she sets 

 to work a laboratory so wonderful that all the science 

 of the world cannot equal the perfections of its 

 operations. She there combines the gases, gives 

 up the richness of her rocks and forms the food on 

 which plants can alone exist. Then through the 

 thousand pores she draws the food in contact with 

 the rootlets that are eager to drink it in. In the 

 air she brings to every leaf a supply for its thou- 

 sand hungry mouths. At night she distills the re- 

 freshing dew, and anon she brings up the thick wa- 

 ter cloud that, descending in the rain, gives verdure 

 to the field and forest and springs among the hilfe. 

 Who can contemplate the machinery by which life 

 is sustained for a single summer and not be struck 

 with the wonderful provisions in inorganic nature, 

 a single one of which failing no adjusting power of 

 animals or plants could save them? That chemis- 

 try of soils and air, — that mechanism of attraction, — 

 that machinery of evaporation and transportation 

 and condensation must all be kept in constant oper- 

 ation to secure this one result, the perpetuation of 

 life on the globe. And how wonderfully alike is 

 the sum of all these agencies from year to year ! 



