48 Country Rambles. 



just grow up quietly and inoffensively, open their flowers, 

 love the rain, in due time ripen their seeds, then 

 wither and depart, leaving no more to be recorded of 

 their life and actions than comes of the brief span of the 

 little babe that melts unweaned from its mother's arms. 

 This is quite to mistake their nature. So far from being 

 uniform, and unmarked by anything active, the lives of 

 plants are full from beginning to end of the most curious 

 and diversified phenomena. Not that they act know- 

 ingly, exercising consciousness and volition, this has 

 been the dream only of a few enthusiasts, but taking 

 one plant with another, the history of vegetable life is 

 quite a romance, and scarcely inferior in wonderful cir- 

 cumstance to that of animals. So close is the general 

 resemblance of plants to animals, as regards the vital 

 processes and phenomena, that it would be difficult, if 

 not impossible, to point out a single fact in connection 

 with the one that has not a counterpart, more or less 

 exact, among the other. The animal world is a repeti- 

 tion in finer workmanship of the vegetable. As for 

 harmlessness and inoffensiveness in plants, these are the 

 very last qualities to be ascribed to them. Pleasant are 

 fragrant flowers, and sweet fruits, and wholesome herbs, 

 but these tell only half the tale. No wild beast of the 

 forest rends with sharper teeth than grow on thorn-trees 

 of different kinds; if the wasp darts its poisoned sting 

 into our flesh, so does the nettle; if snakes' bites be 

 mortal, so is the venomous juice of the deadly night- 

 shade. Not in the least surprising is it, then, that we 



