THE LIFE OF A PRIMROSE. 151 
among the green leaves, and we make our rooms 
sweet and gay with the tender and lovely blossoms. 
But tell me, did you ever stop to think, as you added 
flower after flovyer to your nosegay, how the plants 
which bear them have been building up their green 
leaves and their fragile buds during the last few 
weeks ? If you had visited the same spot a month 
before, a few last year's leaves, withered and dead, 
would have been all that you would have found. And 
now the whole wood is carpeted with delicate green 
leaves, with nodding bluebells, and pale-yellow prim- 
roses, as if a fairy had touched the ground and covered 
it with fresh young life. And our fairies have been at 
work here ; the fairy " Life," of whom we know so little, 
though we love her so well and rejoice in the beautiful 
forms she can produce ; the fairy sunbeams with their 
invisible influence kissing the tiny shoots and warming 
them into vigour and activity ; the gentle rain-drops, 
the balmy air, all these have been working, while you 
or I passed heedlessly by ; and now we come and 
gather the flowers they have made, and too often 
forget to wonder how these lovely forms have sprung 
up around us. 
Our work during the next hour will be to consider 
this question. You were asked last week to bring 
with you to-day a primrose-flower, or a whole plant if 
possible, in order the better to follow out with me the 
" Life of a Primrose." * This is a very different kind 
of subject from those of our former lectures. There 
* To enjoy this lecture, the child ought to have, if possible, a prim- 
rose-flower, an almond soaked for a few minutes in hot water, and a 
piece of orange 
