Plant Life. 93 



The trees take life less tragically than do most 

 of the garden flowers. They grow at their leisure, 

 and after years of careful preparation bloom with 

 temperance, and unexhausted live on to repeat 

 each year their anthem of love. 



The peach-tree, growing rapidly and hastening 

 into rapturous outbreak of ecstatic pink, pays the 

 penalty of too great ardor by soon closing its 

 career. 



The apple-tree, less vehement, grows more leis- 

 urely and waits longer for the consummation of 

 love to express itself in a fragrant mantle of bloom, 

 and consequently has a longer lease of life ; while 

 the orange-tree, yet more discreet, lingers in pre- 

 paration for eight or even ten years, then applies 

 itself to the creation of fragrance and beauty for a 

 correspondingly great length of time, increasing in 

 power each year. 



Early maturity thus seems, even in the plan*" 

 world, to be connected with early death. 



The blossoming of a plant is always an expres- 

 sion of its desire to reproduce itself. 



The flower is the symbol of love ; within it is 

 somewhere concealed the ovary with its burden 

 of waiting life, or the stamen with its burden of 

 eager life. 



Often one flower contains both ovary and 

 stamens, though very frequently this is not the 

 case. As in the animal life, the ovary is some- 

 times in one individual, the fertilizing material in 



