LATER YEARS OF A PLANT. 205 



of the West Indies. They are exceedingly fond of these 

 nuts, and yet it is vain for them to look up to a height 

 which even man can but rarely reach ; so the tree itself 

 rings the dinner-bell when all is ready, and as night falls 

 the hungry gourmands are seen to rush in armies to the 

 feast to which they have been so quaintly invited. 



After the fruit has ripened and the seed has been sent 

 adrift, comes mostly the " last scene of all, that ends this 

 strange, eventful history." For plants also die, and when 

 they have bloomed and given seed, they droop and hide 

 themselves in the ground, to rise once more and ever again 

 with the coining spring. " The grass withereth and the 

 flower fadeth," now under a burning sun, and now for want 

 of moisture ; excessive cold kills even the proud oak and 

 glorious elms ; the action of poisons or the ravages of an 

 insignificant beetle make an end to their lives, but they 

 die happy plants ! without pain, without consciousness, 

 still and silent as they have lived. Their time of life 

 varies greatly, from the athletic oak, that stands the storms 

 of a thousand years, a monument of nations, to the humble 

 mushroom under its shade, which rises in a night, to perish 

 in the morning. But the season comes for all, when the 

 wind passes over them, and they are gone, and the place 

 thereof knows them no more. And the vine is dried up, 

 and the fig-tree languisheth, the pomegranate, the palm- 

 tree, also, and the apple-tree, even all the trees of the 

 field are withered. But how sweet is here even the part- 

 ing, how full of comfort for the present, how full of hope 

 for 1 the future ! The dying breath of fading flowers is 

 their sweetest perfume, and a deep flush often overspreads 



