LEAF AND TENDRIL 



terious agency of animal life, we think better of it. 

 The trembling gold of the pond-lily's heart, and 

 its petals like carved snow, are no more a trans- 

 formation of a little black muck and ooze by the 

 chemistry of the sunbeam than our bodies and 

 minds, too, are a transformation of the soil under- 

 foot. 



We are rooted to the air through our lungs and 

 to the soil through our stomachs. We are walking 

 trees and floating plants. The soil which in one 

 form we spurn with our feet, and in another take 

 into our mouths and into our blood — what a com- 

 posite product it is! It is the grist out of which 

 our bread of life is made, the grist which the mills 

 of the gods, the slow patient gods of Erosion, have 

 been so long grinding — grinding probably more 

 millions of years than we have any idea of. The 

 original stuff, the pulverized granite, was probably 

 not very nourishing, but the fruitful hand of time 

 has made it so. It is the kind of grist that improves 

 with the keeping, and the more the meal-worms 

 have worked in it, the better the bread. Indeed, 

 until it has been eaten and digested by our faithful 

 servitors the vegetables, it does not make the loaf 

 that is our staff of life. The more death has gone 

 into it, the more life comes out of it ; the more it 

 is a cemetery, the more it becomes a nursery; the 

 more the rocks perish, the more the fields flourish. 



This story of the soil appeals to the imagination. 

 200 



