THE GREEN WORLD 225 



The laisser faire side is the obvious side. We 

 cannot be blind to it. We can easily produce an 

 illustration of it for ourselves by dropping a pinch 

 of dust-fine seed on a foot of soil, and let alone the 

 seedlings when they appear, and they will throttle 

 and thrust and starve each other out, just as they 

 do in the wild. But there is the other side that 

 does not show on the face of things, but is every- 

 where working out of sight, working tremendously 

 in May days and nights. This is the side of method 

 and cosmos. Each kind of green thing is furnished 

 with machinery of growth exact, most orderly and 

 efficient, working with clocklike precision. 



It is the factory of green life; and on the perfect 

 May day in the wood, the air full of sun, and the 

 soil with just the right amount of moisture, all the 

 myriad wheels are a-whir. Here, at least, order is 

 a living presence. It rules even in the turgid little 

 cauldrons of sappy matter which because it is turgid 

 is bubbling from cell to cell within the plant and 

 driving through the vessels, finally in the leaf to 

 reach the kitchen of the plant, the mesophyll, where 

 it will quickly be cooked into nourishing food, on 

 which the plant may grow to flower and seed-hood. 



Given enough earth and air space, every plant is 

 fitted, through this machinery of pump and pressure, 

 and this factory of food, to perfect itself and fling 

 abroad its seed. But here provision and order end. 

 Fitted out with the nucleus of a machinery that 



