A LANE IN THE COTSWOLDS 59 



simple way it gains the object aspired to by all 

 climbers, name!}' the possession of a satisfactory 

 position in the world without going to the expense 

 of building a stem stiff enough to stand alone. To 

 children goose-grass is valuable as the ideal material 

 for the making of sham birds' nests, since the 

 hooked prickles hold the stems in position and make 

 the art of nest-building a singularly easy one. 



The great revolution that breaks out in 

 the spring, when the store-houses of the plant 

 pour nutriment into the numberless awaken- 

 ing buds is a miracle annually repeated in the 

 endless procession of life. We know something of 

 the mechanism bj^ which mobilisation is effected. 

 We know for instance that the starch-grains 

 guarded by the dormant plant during the idle days 

 of winter are liquified, or rather, that the starch is 

 converted into sugar, and being soluble in water 

 can flow from the magazines of the plant to where 

 growth, implying the creation of millions of newly 

 born cells, demands material. We are gradually 

 learning to understand something of that seething 

 cauldron of life which we can dimly watch in 

 living things. The ferment diastase is one of the 

 tools with which plants perform their miracles of 

 chemical activity. This diastase and its brother- 

 ferments have quaHties resembling those of living 

 creatures. They may, like seeds, be dried and 

 kept in a bottle until they are awakened by 

 giving them water. Perhaps this is talking in a 

 circle, and that ferments onh' resemble living 

 things because organisms contain so many of these 

 mysterious bodies. I like to fancy that there is 



