IMPRESSIONIST SKETCH 21 



drink, the tender life of Keleos, and the youth flourishes 

 bravely. Does this old story not refer to that common- 

 place of the biology of Winter that Mother Earth has been a 

 careful nurse of the seeds committed to her charge ? That 

 the seeds are " adapted " to the Earth is familiar to all, but 

 in common honesty we must recognise that without putting 

 herself about the Earth looks after them well. 



In any case, we observe in Spring that the rise of tempera- 

 ture has quickened the seeds, prompting the formation of 

 nuclein compounds and the division of cells (which organic 

 growth implies). Ferments have dissolved the hard stores 

 of reserve-material into soft nutriment. The very minions 

 of Death the Bacteria have helped to loose the bands of 

 birth, and the seedlings are rising from the ground. For 

 now the anger of Demeter is stayed, Proserpina has returned 

 from the kingdom of the dead, mother and daughter rejoice 

 together. And in a world where all is so wonderful, " so full 

 of death, so bordering upon heaven," is there anything so 

 wonderful as this meeting of life and death, as this raising 

 of what we call dead into what we call living, as this power 

 that green plants have to win the sun's aid, that they may, 

 by secret alchemy, transmute the beggarly elements of 

 water, soil, and air into the bread and wine of life ? We can 

 understand the dying Keats saying that of all things the 

 most beautiful was the growing of the flowers " the growing 

 of the flowers." And there will certainly be reason for deep 

 regret if the study of the Biology of the Seasons, in leading 

 students to a theory of " photo-synthesis/' loses the vision 

 of the returning Proserpina. 



The great god Pan is with us again, tangibly but never 

 visibly. We feel him in the warm Spring breeze, and every- 

 where we hear his merry pipes. Now he is among the 

 rustling withered reeds, quickening them to leafage, and 

 setting the birds a-singing ; now he is over the rippling lake, 



