NEWS OF SPRING 



their diverse methods, we are reminded of those enthralling 

 exhibitions of machine-tools, of machines for making machin- 

 ery, in which the mechanical genius of man reveals all its re- 

 sources. But mechanical genius dates from yesterday, 

 whereas floral mechanism has been at work for thousands of 

 years. When the flowers made their appearance upon our 

 earth, there were no models around them which they could 

 imitate; they had to derive everything from within them- 

 selves. At the period when we had not gone beyond the club, 

 the bow and the battle-flail; in the comparatively recent days 

 when we conceived the spinning-wheel, the pulley, the tackle, 

 the ram ; at the time — it was last year, so to speak — when our 

 master-pieces were the catapult, the clock and the weaving- 

 loom, the Sage had contrived the uprights and counter- 

 weights of its lever of precision and the Lousewort its sacks 

 closed up as though for a scientific experiment, the successive 

 releasing of its springs and the combination of its inclined 

 planes. Who, say a hundred years ago, dreamt of the prop- 

 erties of the screw-propeller which the Maple and the Lime- 

 tree have been using since the birth of the trees? When shall 

 we succeed in building a parachute or a flying-machine as 

 firm, as light, as delicate and as safe as that of the Dandelion? 



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