THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



librium. The drones seek the queen, and the queen 

 seeks the drones, from an inward inherited impulse. 

 The tendrils of the viae reach out in all directions for 

 support because there is the push of life behind 

 them — something craving support. 



It is this push of life that distinguishes the organic 

 from the inorganic — this power of growth. Life is 

 like a fountain in this respect. To suppress a foun- 

 taia, you must needs change the soil and rocks 

 from which it draws its water. Block its course, and 

 it forms a new one; suppressed here, it breaks out 

 there; there is a never-ceasing push and accumula- 

 tion of the waters. It is as hard to suppress certain 

 trees and plants as to extinguish a fountain; as long 

 as the roots remain, the new tree, the new plant, is 

 pushed out again. The organic life of the globe, 

 considered as a whole, pushes out and on in the same 

 way. 



Nature takes her chances, but her system of 

 things is so dovetailed together and is so flexible, 

 and in the course of ages has worked itself out so 

 completely, that sooner or later she makes her points. 

 If I depended upon the winds or the floods or the 

 animals to sow my seed or plant my trees, how ex- 

 tremely precarious would be my harvest of grain and 

 of nuts and fruit. But this spring I saw a red squir- 

 rel carrying the butternuts out of the walls of my 

 house where he had stored them last fall, and hiding 

 them here and there under the leaves and dry grass 

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