34 PROSERPINA. 



once the two great facts about vegetation. Where warmth is. 

 and moisture there also, the leaf. Where no warmth there 

 is no leaf ; where there is no dew no leaf. 



7. Look, then, to the branch you hold in your hand. That 

 you can so hold it, or make a crown of it, if you choose, is 

 the first thing I want you to note of it ; the proportion of 

 size, namely, between the leaf and you. Great part of your 

 life and character, as a human creature, has depended on that. 

 Suppose all leaves had been spacious, like some palm leaves ; 

 solid, like cactus stem ; or that trees had grown, as they might 

 of course just as easily have grown, like mushrooms, all one 

 great cluster of leaf round one stalk. I do not say that they 

 are divided into small leaves only for your delight, or your 

 service, as if you were the monarch of everything even in 

 this atom of a globe. You are made of your proper size ; 

 and the leaves of theirs : for reasons, and by laws, of which 

 neither the leaves nor you know anything. Only note the 

 harmony between both, and the joy we may have in this di- 

 vision and mystery of the frivolous and tremulous petals, 

 which break the light and the breeze, compared to what, 

 with the frivolous and the tremulous mind which is in us, we 

 could have had out of domes, or penthouses, or walls of leaf. 



8. Secondly ; think awhile of its dark clear green, and the 

 good of it to you. Scientifically, you know green in leaves is 

 owing to ' chlorophyll,' or, in English, to ' green-leaf.' It may 

 be very fine to know that ; but my advice to you, on the whole, 

 is to rest content with the general fact that leaves are green 

 when they do not grow in or near smoky towns ; and not by 

 any means to rest content with the fact that very soon there 

 will not be a green leaf in England, but only greenish-black 

 ones. And thereon resolve that you will yourself endeavour 

 to promote the growing of the green wood, rather than of the 

 black. 



9. Looking at the back of your laurel-leaves, you see how 

 the central rib or spine of each, and the lateral branchings, 

 strengthen and carry it. I find much confused use, in botani- 

 cal works, of the words Vein and Rib. For, indeed, there are 

 veins in the ribs of leaves, as marrow in bones ; and the pro- 



