74 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE. 



scarce and almost extinct. They are torn out of the 

 ground at the most critical time, and the seed that 

 should renew them when spring returns with its 

 encouraging showers, is forbidden to ripen. The 

 botanists who carry off handfuls of specimens as so 

 many trophies of their explorations, have far less to 

 answer for than the herb-gatherers, who it would 

 scarcely be too severe to call the locusts of modern 

 ages. 



Last in the order of preparation for the fruit comes 

 the glow and the grace of the flower. When this 

 makes its appearance, it is the aurora of the plants 

 fecundity, much, it is true, may be repressed by 

 blight and chill, just as a heavenly morning-dawn in 

 early summer, that cheers the heart of the little lark, 

 is not seldom changed into cold and gray, by winds 

 that bring unwelcome clouds, but the intent of the 

 flower is that fruit shall be its sequence. Therefore 

 the queenly and incomparable hues ; therefore the 

 odors that seem breath inherited from Eden ; therefore 

 the forms and outlines before which the mathematician 

 is still a child. We might be sure that some great 

 event was near at hand, did experience not assure us 

 that fruit would follow all this outlay, since grandeur 

 of announcement in nature is always prophetic of 

 something opulent to follow. In nature, the herald's 

 trumpet is never blown in idleness or sport. It is al- 

 ways an illustration, once over again, of the incompar- 



