I3 8 ROUND THE YEAR 



it up, and at length made their way to the air and 

 light. Shoots of Coltsfoot and the common Field 

 Equisetum, sent out from plants well established on 

 the adjoining slope, have succeeded in breaking 

 through a solid stratum more than an inch thick. 



I do not in the least understand how the growing 

 shoots of herbaceous plants can force their way 

 through an asphalt pavement. It is true that any 

 observant person can find like instances. We know 

 of the sapling which grew through the hole in the 

 middle of a millstone, and ended by lifting the 

 millstone from the ground. We have perhaps seen, 

 as I myself have done, a tree growing in the cleft of 

 a rock, and at length forcing asunder fragments which 

 would tax the strength of several men to lift. We 

 talk of turgidity and the like, but we have not solved 

 the problem. Where is the mechanician who will 

 undertake to push a growing herbaceous stem, neither 

 so thick nor so firm as a lead pencil, through an inch 

 of hard asphalt? 



On the same platform are little hollows, hardly 

 apparent to the eye, where the asphalt has been 

 chipped or indented. In some of these hollows dust 

 has collected, and seeds or spores have germinated 

 there. A little annual grass, a chickweed and a moss 

 flourish in these minute garden-plots, few of which 

 are bigger than a sixpence. At the foot of one of 

 the lamp-posts a handful of earth and sand has 

 collected, and here five sorts of flowering plants have 

 managed to establish themselves. 



Germs of living things are scattered everywhere, 

 and some develop in the most unexpected situations. 



