THE DAISY. 19 



dwells, has fallen to decay; although ex- 

 isting, completely formed, in the tenderest 

 blade of grass, or the smallest flower that 

 opens to the sunbeams. 



Who, in looking at the simple daisy, could 

 discern the unalterable carbon that dwells 

 within her? who might conjecture that when 

 her flowers are seen no longer, and her 

 leaves have lost their greenness, withering 

 from off* the parent stem, and seeming to 

 be lost for ever, there would arise from out 

 the decaying leaves, as a spirit from its 

 earthly tenement, a gas, a vapour, which 

 the eye may not behold, and which, either 

 hovering around the place from whence it 

 rose, or floating through the air, waits only 

 for the emerging of the daisy, or of some 

 herb or flower, from the parent earth, at 

 the return of spring ? Into these it becomes 

 absorbed, and then again its active mmistry 

 is seen in the developing of leaves and bios- 



