164 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



for Nature, a good architect, knows the necessity of ventila- 

 tion, and provides for it in the humblest of lowly mosses 

 with as much care as in the lofty dome of the universe. 

 In aquatic plants, moreover, these same tubes render them 

 buoyant, as in one of the huge fucus that grow from the 

 bottom of the ocean. All along the immense stem, which 

 reaches from the vast deep up to the light of day, little 

 vessels occur, filled with air, and it is by these tiny bal- 

 loons, thus continued from story to story, that the enor- 

 mous leaves of the giant plant are buoyed up, and finally 

 enabled to float on the surface, covering the waves with 

 an immense carpet of verdure. And thus, with unerring 

 regularity, which, in an almost endless variety of forms, 

 still maintains those great laws of Nature that betoken 

 the will of the Most High, these same cells have been 

 formed, not only in the parent plant for its next successor, 

 but during thousands of generations; and that on all parts 

 of the earth, in the same way, the same shape ! Well 

 may we, then, with a distinguished German botanist, look 

 upon the vegetable world as the rich altar-cloth in the 

 temple of God where we worship the beautiful and the 

 sublime, because it is His handiwork. 



Plants live, then, and feed. Little do we commonly 

 think, little do we therefore know of the way in which 

 they live and feed. We see animals take their food openly 

 and grossly, in the most conspicuous and eminent part of 

 their body; they tear and swallow, ruminate or masticate. 

 We ourselves do something in that line. But delicate 

 plants hide the coarse process of nutrition under ground, 

 or within the close walls of each tiny cell. There, with 



