24 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE. 



however, is not that they should be checked, but that 

 they should hold such an amount of inner warmth as 

 to stand proof against the bitterness that destroys 

 tender things from India with a touch. In severe 

 winters many trees get quite killed ; but thousands 

 of others prove their invulnerableness, and seem, as it 

 were, to rise from the dead. Many and wonderful 

 have been the miracles wrought for special moral pur- 

 poses, but no miracle has ever exceeded in sweet and 

 impressive power, that great one we all witness every 

 spring, when that which seemed quite dead, shows 

 life in unabated energy, and this without the visible 

 presence of a miracle-worker. 



Curious is it to note also how many of the buds 

 prepared by a tree never come to maturity, nor even 

 sprout. Buds are disposed so symmetrically upon the 

 branches, that were every one of them to be pushed 

 forth into a twig, and again produce other twigs, 

 there would soon be an inextricable mass, utterly pre- 

 ventive of ventilation and the entrance of light, and 

 the tree would die of self-suffocation. But the econ- 

 omy of nature provides for the premature death and 

 destruction of an enormously large proportion, no 

 more growing than there is ample room for, yet as 

 many as will render the tree perfect and picturesque. 

 So admirable is the dispensation of natural laws, 

 evoking order out of disorder, and making what seems 

 to be injury and loss the very means towards securing 



