378 NATURE STUDY. 



of you ferns ; but they have been working so hard, and live to- 

 gether so happily ! Some of the grasses tell me that they can feel 

 the milkweed roots growing, growing, growing ever so far under the 

 ground. The buttercup says that the roots go down very deep in the 

 ground, and leave the part of the earth near the top for the roots of 

 the smaller plants ; and that they work, work, work all the time, 

 night and day. All summer they have been making milk. When 

 the buttercup asked one of them what they were going to do with so 

 much milk, it stopped work just long enough to say, l You wait until 

 next fall, and then you will see. ' 



11 1 have watched the stems growing up and carrying those thick, 

 heavy leaves, so different from ours. I would think that they would 

 get tired of such loads ; but the more leaves they have to carry the 

 better they seem to like it. When I asked them one day if they did 

 not get tired, they looked so surprised. * Tired ? We tired ? Why, 

 that is what we are made for, to hold up and feed those leaves.' 

 Then one of them said: 'But that is not all that we do. The most 

 wonderful thing is going to happen next fall. We are getting ready 

 loads and loads of milk for it.' When I asked what was going to 

 happen, she laughed such a funny laugh, and only said, 4 You wait 

 until next fall, and then you will find out.' Now they have to carry 

 those heavy green things at the top, ' pods ' they call them, and 

 they seem happier than ever. It is nice to have happy neighbors, 

 even if you can't see what makes them so happy. 



4 'The leaves, those thick, heavy ugly things, so different from the 

 beautiful leaves that we ferns have " Just then I heard another 

 voice, so different from the first. I looked all about, and could see 

 only a robin in the tree above us. The sound seemed to come from 

 him. " Ugly! that's all you know. If you could be as high as I am, 

 and could see how kind and thoughtful those leaves are, you would 

 never call them ugly. They are thick, but that is because they carry 

 so much milk to feed their little brothers and sisters with. They are 

 large ; but that is because they have so much work to do, and they 

 do it too. I wish you could see how carefully the larger leaves bend 

 over the baby leaves which are nestled together above them, at the 

 very top of the stem ; and how warm they keep them at night, and in 

 the daytime, too, when it is cold.i Never again call the milkweed 

 leaves ugly." 



i The little folks are intensely interested in seeing, not merely being told, 

 how the upper leaves of the milkweed move up, toward night, to close over 

 the " baby leaves," and spread out again in the morning. 



