8 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



children of leaves, to make the earth fair for 

 ever. And when the leaves marry, they put 

 on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than 

 Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts 

 of honey, and we call them 'Flowers'." 



We need not stay to distinguish fact from 

 fancy in this passage. They distinguish them- 

 selves. That plants, including trees, do un- 

 consciously — on our assumption — marry is 

 fact ; and those whose marriage is aided by 

 insects make themselves — no, we must only 

 say become — conspicuously attractive, and to 

 our eyes beautiful, when the marrying-time 

 comes round. 



Mr. Edward Step, in Wayside and Wood- 

 land Trees, quotes Huxley's saying that '' The 

 plant is an animal confined in a wooden case ; 

 and Nature, like Sycorax, holds thousands 

 of * delicate Ariels ' imprisoned in every oak. 

 She is jealous of letting us know this; and 

 among the higher and more conspicuous forms 

 of plants reveals it only by such obscure mani- 

 festations as the shrinking of the Sensitive 

 Plant, the sudden clasp of the Dionaea, or 

 still more slightly, by the phenomena of the 

 cyclosis." It really becomes difficult not to 



