PLANT LIFE. 37 



apple. You have seen the great labor of the mother tree in 

 perfecting this vital principle in the seed. She has exhausted 

 all her strength ; still, in her economy, she has all this time 

 been preparing another set of fruit-buds for the coming season, 

 but she has not strength enough left to mature them properly. 

 All her efforts are now required to recuperate her own ener- 

 gies ; therefore the original purpose of these buds must be 

 altered ; their mission must be changed ; and they are conse- 

 quently transformed from fruit to leaf buds. Had the tree been 

 relieved from the necessity of maturing her large crop by thin- 

 ning — taking out the imperfect fruit — the balance would have 

 been worth more tlian the whole now is, and the tree would 

 have been in condition to have matured her fruit-buds, and pro- 

 duced another crop of fruit the next season ; for, like the 

 mother who bestows extra care on her deformed child, the tree 

 gives as much care to the imperfect as to the perfect fruit ; it is 

 the seed only that is the object of her solicitude and attention. 



This principle runs through all nature, and from it we may 

 learn a lesson. 



Take the grass, for example. Much has been said and much 

 has been written on the subject, and much good, I am satisfied, 

 has and will come out of the discussion. This much only I 

 wish to say, that I believe the proper time to cut grass for the 

 barn to be when the grasses are in the milk, just before the ma- 

 turing of the seed begins. It is then that the stalk holds all the 

 properties which are so nutritious for animal food. Let the 

 juices become absorbed in the maturing of the seed, and you 

 will find but little nutriment left in the stalk, nearly all having 

 passed into the seed, and still you will not find all its virtues in 

 the seed. A transformation has taken place ; the element of 

 sugar has disappeared, and starch is the principal property left. 



But there are other important considerations to be taken into 

 account. By cutting the grass before the exhausting process of 

 maturing the seed takes place, you save the vitality of the grass 

 roots for a second crop ; for the moment nature is defeated in 

 her object of maturing the seed, she goes immediately to work 

 to retrieve her misfortune by throwing up new stalks and flow- 

 ers, which, being treated as before, crop after crop may thus be 

 taken without exhausting the soil as much as the maturing of 

 one crop of perfect seed. The ladies may, from this fact, learn 



