6 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE. 



bids welcome, charm our eyes with lovely colors, and 

 our nostrils with aromas. In a word, though to civil- 

 ized man it is the first day of the year, to vegetable 

 life it is a period of advanced infancy. Eightly to 

 esteem the flow of the seasons, we must view them as 

 an unbroken sequence of new developments. Though 

 one class of appearances may come to a close, another 

 rises out of it almost before we miss the departing 

 one ; as on a fair midsummer's night, before we have 

 lost the last trails of the reluctant sunset, the calm, 

 still, sweet aurora of the new sunrise, peeping over 

 the mountain-tops, enters our hearts like the smile of 

 a child. 



In a word, again, we never see beginnings. We 

 think we trace rivers to their sources, but the first 

 trickles among the moss on the mountain-side, are 

 collections of water-drops that have their own anterior 

 history. The coy sources of the Nile, that have at 

 length rewarded enterprise, far back as they lie in 

 those sul^y African plains, do but represeut a stage 

 in the life of the immortal stream. The forest that 

 has been venerable for ages, began in acorns and tiny 

 seeds, whence derived, even the philosopher can only 

 guess. The shells that inlay the wrinkles on the 

 sands, — these come tossed up, it may be, from some 

 birthplace that human eye has never beheld ; — it is 

 always something in a measure accomplished that we 

 obtain ; early as we commence our search, we always 



