202 LEAVES FROM THE BOOK OF NATURE. 



mark that "we never hear a rose opening or a tulip 

 shooting forth its gorgeous colors," and yet of the same 

 quiet flowers it was said : Consider the lilies of the field : 

 I say unto you, that Solomon, in all his glory, was not 

 arrayed like one of these! 



When the beauty of flowers is gone, their leaves drop . 

 quietly, silently to the ground; but a part of the flower 

 always remains attached to the stem, and this contains 

 the fruit or the seeds of the plant by which it continues 

 its existence and reproduces itself. It is in the process 

 of preparing these parts that plants show most distinctly 

 how well they know what time of the year it is. In 

 autumn they feel that winter is coming, and prepare for 

 it, by completing all the necessary processes with far 

 greater activity than they have shown at any other period 

 of their life. It is, of course, not an innate conscious- 

 ness of the season that impels them to do so, but an 

 extremely delicate and now much heightened perception 

 of outward influences, inappreciable to our less refined 

 senses. The production of seeds is the great end of the 

 life of the majority of plants, though not of trees and 

 all those who live for many years. But the humbler 

 plants see in it the great purpose of their existence : for 

 this they have grown and worked and lived, for this they 

 have unfolded the whole rich apparatus of flowers, and 

 now their best cares are bestowed upon the ripening fruit. 

 No precaution is neglected to preserve it; the little cap- 

 sules which hold the precious seed of future generations, 

 are surrounded with thorns, or covered with down, cased 

 in leather, buried in large masses of succulent flesh, or 



