VIT. 



TEBE-FOOD. 



ROWTH in Nature cannot 

 be effected without food 

 of some kind, and nou- 

 rislinient is as essential to 

 plants as to all other 

 organic things. Here, 

 however, growth will be 

 only incidentally referred 

 to, as, for plants, it is a 

 subject that only in a 

 slight degree appertains to Winter ; but the in- 

 teresting question of food, and the provision that 

 Nature makes for it, is quite appropriate to the 

 season which forms the theme of this volume. 



Perhaps to the careless observer who wanders 

 into wintry woodlands, the least attractive object 

 is furnished by the dead leaves over which he 



