THE CHRYSALIS YEAR. 



brimstone is no sooner out than the coltsfoot 

 and the celandine and the bulbous butter- 

 cup spread their gold to allure him. And 

 has it ever struck you that the plants, no 

 less than the animals, pass through the 

 winter period in the chrysalis condition ? 

 This is no mere figurative flower of speech ; 

 it is the scientific statement of a real and 

 profound analogy. During the summer 

 months the leaves of the crocus, the tulip, 

 and the hyacinth have been eating and 

 laying by, exactly as the caterpillar did, 

 to provide material for next year's flowering 

 season. When winter blows cold, the leaves 

 die down the plant, as it were, retires 

 underground into its bulb, like the cater- 

 pillar into the cocoon, and there remains, 

 formless and organless, a mere pupa-like 

 potentiality of future buds and blossoms. 

 But when warm weather recurs, the bulb 

 once more begins to germinate : it takes 

 fresh form as a vigorous flower -head. 

 Observe, too, that the flowering stem, like 

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