6o THE BOY SCOUT 



and floral organs will spring. The youthful sap has 

 not yet risen to any height in the bush. If we 

 could go below ground among the root fairies we 

 might find a great commotion taking place, the 

 summons having already gone forth that the 

 resurrection of the sap shall be celebrated. 



But the water-drops, what are they doing mean- 

 while upon the flower and leaf buds hidden in 

 their midst, and at present just showing a trace 

 of pinkish-red, evidence enough of returning life ? 

 Are they there to nourish the vegetable treasures 

 to which they have become attached ? Each bud 

 that is so lovingly caressed by the melted water- 

 drop performs a good and useful service to the 

 tree, or bush, or tiny plant; for all require food, 

 and light, and air, and warmth. Vegetable 

 growths are not the dull, inanimate things some 

 people imagine, but living parts of the great uni- 

 verse, sometimes clothed soberly and unobtrusively, 

 at others in all the colours of the rainbow. 



Later, look at our Hawthorn bush again. 'Tis 

 May-time, and whilst we have been staying to 

 moralise. Spring has appeared and gone, and left 

 Summer in possession. The bush is now festooned 

 with a succession of foamy billows of a whiteness 

 pure as a virgin's robe, and who shall say that the 

 little water-drop which we examined earlier in the 

 year did not help very largely to build up one of 

 the jewels now adorning the Hawthorn's crown ? 



