28 PROSERPINA. 



ent on insects for its existence. Doubly strange therefore, it 

 seems, that in some cases this race of plants all but reaches 

 the independent life of insects. It rather settles upon boughs 

 than roots itself in them ; half of its roots may wave in the air. 



11. What vital power is, men of science are not a step 

 nearer knowing than they were four thousand years ago. They 

 are, if anything, farther from knowing now than then, in that 

 they imagine themselves nearer. But they know more about 

 its limitations and manifestations than they did. They have 

 even arrived at something like a proof that there is a fixed 

 quantity of it flowing out of things and into them. But, for 

 the present, rest content with the general and sure knowledge 

 that, fixed or flowing, measurable or immeasurable one with 

 electricity or heat or light, or quite distinct from any of them 

 life is a delightful, and its negative, death, a dreadful thing, to 

 human creatures ; and that you can give or gather a certain 

 quantity of life into plants, animals, and yourself by wisdom 

 and courage, and by their reverses can bring upon them any 

 quantity of death you please, which is a much more serious 

 point for you to consider than what life and death are. 



12. Now, having got a quite clear idea of a root properly so 

 called, we may observe what those storehouses, refuges, and 

 ruins are. which we find connected with roots. The greater 

 number of plants feed and grow at the same time ; but there 

 are some of them which like to feed first and grow afterwards. 

 For the first year, or, at all events, the first period of their 

 life, they gather material for their future life out of the ground 

 and out of the air, and lay it up in a storehouse as bees make 

 combs. Of these stores for the most part rounded masses 

 tapering downwards into the ground some are as good for hu- 

 man beings as honeycombs are ; only not so sweet. We steal 

 them from the plants, as we do from the bees, and these conical 

 upside-down hives or treasuries of Atreus, under the names of 

 carrots, turnips, and radishes, have had important influence 

 on human fortunes. If we do not steal the store, next year 

 the plant lives upon it, raises its stem, flowers and seeds out 

 of that abundance, and having fulfilled its destiny, and pro- 

 vided for its successor, passes away, root and branch together. 



