The Wonder of the World 31 



parts so perfectly correlated and so well adapted 

 to their surroundings; we learn something of their 

 relationships and long pedigree, discovering, it 

 may be, that their race is much older than our 

 own; we enter the laboratory of the leaf and study 

 the strange alchemy that goes on there, the raising 

 of dead raw materials to the level of livingness; we 

 find that its substances are breaking down and 

 being built up again — a ceaseless combustion, 

 **nec tamen consumebatur'*; we watch the plant 

 grow from the invisible to the visible, from one 

 cell to a million of cells, from apparent simplicity 

 to obvious complexity; we see the bee come to 

 visit it, and the quaint give-and-take that occurs; 

 we see the storing up of treasure for a new gener- 

 ation, and that generation being born; we watch 

 the leaf withering and the flower fading, and we 

 often see the return of all but the seeds to the 

 level of the not-living once more. Without being 

 insincere, without being more than awake to the 

 wonder of the commonplace, may we not say: 



"Flower in the crannied wall, 

 I pluck you out of the crannies; 

 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand 

 Little flower — but if I could understand 

 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

 I should know what God and man is." 



We lift aside the earthworm which lay adying on 

 the foot-path, so contemptible that we say "even 



