52 Instinct, 



The winds blow when and where they list — the 

 days of wet and drought and heat and cold no one 

 can foretell. But at the end of the year, the result 

 of all these operations is found to be near the re- 

 sult for all other years — to come so near to the or- 

 dinary range of climatic change that it may with 

 truth be said that seed-time and harvest never fail. 

 Nor is the earth's work finished when this com- 

 plicated machinery within her soil and atmosphere 

 has covered the fields and forests with their yearly 

 fruits. When the plants have provided for them- 

 selves in ways which we shall describe, through this 

 agency of the earth, she, like a careful mother, pro- 

 vides for their winter's sleep. In northern climes 

 the water takes the feathery form of snow, and like a 

 covering of down protects the tender plants and roots 

 so that many forms are preserved that but for this 

 protection would be destroyed or confined to more 

 southern lands. While northern Hfe is sleeping, 

 the same forces that once acted upon it are provid- 

 ing for the southern zones. If we go back to geo- 

 logic ages the lesson is the same. The provision 

 was the same in kind as now appears, but each geo- 

 logic age was itself a provision for those that were 

 to follow — and all of them were preparatory for the 

 present. While the earth supplied the wants of 

 the tribes that held possession of her, in each of her 

 unmeasured eras, she was providing as by a demi- 

 urgic Instinct for the present generations. No 

 matter now what were the forces employed, no 

 matter whether all this work is the wild sport of 

 chance or the ordaining of Infinite Wisdom. In 



