13*2 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



brightest, sunniest spot they could have chosen, had their 

 eyes been wide open, and their proceedings above ground. 

 As if in return for the manifold services which plants 

 require and receive from their fellow creatures, they show 

 kindness of their own to animal life, and shelter and feed 

 the most timid as well as the noblest of beings, with the 

 hospitality of their generous life. In early childhood al- 

 ready we are taught, that even the smallest of seeds, the 

 mustard seed, grows up to be a tree, "in whose branches 

 the fowls of the heavens have their habitation," that " both 

 Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine 

 and under his fig-tree, all the days of Solomon," and 

 that Deborah, the prophetess, "dwelt under a palm-tree." 

 Modern science has furnished us numerous new and strik- 

 ing instances of the great variety of life, which is thus 

 intimately connected with the vegetable kingdom. It is 

 not only that the plaintive nightingale sings in the mur- 

 muring poplar, whilst the gay butterfly loves the sweet- 

 scented rose, that the sombre yew hides the owl's nest, 

 and the dark northern pine harbors the fur-clad squirrel. 

 Animals, invisible to the naked eye, have been found to 

 float in the sap of trees, and even the smallest moss has 

 its own tiny insect, which it boards and lodges. Aphides 

 and gall insects live, in every sense of the word, on the 

 leaves of plants, flies and butterflies on their flowers, 

 and ants and worms crowd upon them, after death, in 

 countless multitudes. Every plant, moreover, is inhabited 

 by some insect, to which it affords an exclusive home. 

 Many caterpillars are thus born and die with the leaf on 

 which they live, whilst, on the other hand, the proud 



