no ME PLANTS AND TTIEIR WAYS. 29 



are plants, and on land and on water, on the loftiest mount- 

 ain-top and in the very bowels of the earth — everywhere 

 does man find a plant to minister to his support and enjoy- 

 ment, everywhere he sees plants quietly and mysteriously 

 perform their humble duty in the great household of na- 

 ture. Plants alone — it would at first sight appear — have 

 no home, for they seem to be at home everywhere. Turn 

 up the soil where you will, to any depth, and such a rich 

 abundance of vegetable life is mixed with the loam that 

 almost instantaneously plants innumerable spring up from 

 seeds, which may have lain slumbering for thousands of 

 years in the warm bosom of our mother earth. 



10. Man himself can not master this exuberance of 

 vegetable life. He may change it by cultivation, it is true, 

 but that also only for a time. And what is a generation or 

 two in comparison with the eternal earth ? Do not even 

 in our day, and before our eyes, lofty trees raise their 

 proud heads where our fathers cut the green turf with 

 their sharp plow ? In vain does man take the Alpine rose 

 from the banks of its pure mountain brook and plant it in 

 the lowly valley ; in vain does he bring costly seeds from 

 the Indies, and the warm climes of the trojfics, even to the 

 ice-clad coast of Norway. They live and pine and die. It 

 is true he sometimes seeks to reverse Nature itself. He 

 places bubbling fountains on the top of high hills, and 

 plants lime-trees and poplars between great masses of rocks ; 

 vineyards must adorn his valleys, and meadows spread their 

 soft velvet over mountain-sides. But the poet of old al- 

 ready has taught us that you may drive out Nature even 

 with the pitchfork, and yet she will ever return. 



11. A few years' neglect, and how. quickly she resumes 

 her sway ! Artificial lakes become gloomy marshes, bowers 

 are filled with countless briers, and stately avenues are over- 

 grown with reckless profusion. The plants of the soil de- 

 clare war against the intruders from abroad, and claim once 



