8o THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



good enough for them. Long ago they finished their 

 summer, and the annual armageddon will rage above 

 their tomb. Observe, on the other hand, the tactics 

 of the daisy one of the flowers most beloved by the 

 poets. Disdaining the challenge of the grass to a fair 

 and friendly race, it spends the bulk of its days in 

 a spreading movement, a stifling of rival growth in 

 babyhood under a rosette of flat, earth-clinging leaves, 

 from which its " wee, crimson-tippit " flowers rise to a 

 leisurely enjoyment of a solitude that serves it for 

 peace. 



More roundabout, in several senses of the word, is 

 the method by which the hop and many other climbing 

 plants secure heaven. The climbing of a stick may seem 

 an easy matter, when the stick has been obligingly 

 put just in the right place by the self-interested 

 farmer. The intelligence, or whatever it be, of the 

 hop is better seen when there is no stick to remind it 

 by a touch that heaven can be won by a spiral as well 

 as by a straight line. You can then see the shoot of 

 the plant set about finding the core of its spiral, if 

 there be one, by methods similar to the finding of its 

 way home by a carrier-pigeon, the hunting of a hound 

 for a lost trail, or the search of a man round a central 

 spot for an object he thinks he has left thereabout. 

 After rising just above the ground, the hop shoot 

 bends at right angles, and then the horizontal portion 

 sweeps a slow circle through all the points of the 

 compass, growing as it revolves. The second circle 

 has necessarily a longer radius than the first, and each 

 of the others covers more ground than the last. At 

 the height of its speed the circle is accomplished in a 

 little over two hours, and at about the thirty-sixth 



