PRODUCTIVE GARDENING 75 



incantations, and transformed the water into a 

 living growing plant. 



Who could ask to witness a more marvelous 

 feat of jugglery than that? 



Yet such miracles as this are matters of every- 

 day observation with the gardener. Is it strange 

 that he finds peculiar fascination in his work and 

 sees in his plants something more than the mere 

 combinations of root and stem and tuber and 

 seed pod that they present to the casual observer ? 

 Rather to the gardener who goes about his task 

 with the right spirit must every plant appear as 

 the most wonderful of laboratories in which 

 miracles of transformation, outmatching the ut- 

 most feats of the most skillful conjurer, are 

 being performed every hour. 



The All-Importance or Water 



We have chosen the imagined incident of the 

 flower seed grown in the bowl on your window- 

 sill to emphasize the important principle that the 

 one essential element without which no plant can 

 maintain life or take on growth is water. 



The plant grower has always given much heed 

 to soil. He talks of sandy loams and clayey 

 earth, and of humus and fertilizers. And all 

 these, as we shall have occasion to see presently, 

 have vast importance. Yet in the last analysis 



