26 FLOWERS OF THE HOLY LAND. 



that can be achieved by human skill. There is some re 

 lationship between a phosphorus match and a bunch of wheat 

 in the ear. So intimate and so important is this relation 

 ship that wheat will not nourish where the soil contains no 

 phosphorus. (Phosphorus is then under a form different from 

 that in the match, but as truly in the soil as in the match.) But 

 so small is the quantity, and so wonderfully diffused, that for 

 a long time skilful chemists were not able, even with delicate 

 tests, to extract it from the soil. Yet every grain of wheat and 

 every fragile stem of straw contains it, and so unmistakably 

 that all chemists were forced to acknowledge that certain plants, 

 in their power to gather it from the earth around, had far sur 

 passed them. There is also some relation between a cornstalk 

 and a bright little crystal of quartz. Nature knows how to dis 

 solve the material of that little crystal and scatter it through 

 the soil in the form of w r hat is called silica; and, if it were not 

 there, the best seeds of corn would produce no crops, and the best 

 cultivation of that soil would be but toil and time wasted. So, 

 then, plants and fruits will tell us what the soil contains as truly 

 as the most skilful chemists. We sometimes wonder why a land 

 which once bore in profusion certain fruits and plants now seems 

 so unfriendly, and that plants which once grew in it luxuriantly 

 have exchanged places with others, or perhaps have disappeared 

 entirely. But, could these little plants speak, they would 

 immediately tell why it is that so small a quantity of phos 

 phorus or silica in the soil was necessary to their existence. 

 Our eyes form but a small part of our bodies; but their loss 

 w r ould occasion injury to the rest of the body, perhaps 



