THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. \\ 
the bulb, and making it swell and burst upward till it 
sends out a little shoot through the surface of the 
soil. Then the sun-waves above-ground take up the 
work, and form green granules in the tiny leaves, 
helping them to take food out of the air, while the 
little rootlets below are drinking water out of the 
ground. The invisible life and invisible sunbeams are 
busy here, setting actively to work another fairy, the 
force of " chemical attraction," and so the little snow- 
drop plant grows and blossoms, without any help from 
you or me. 
One picture more, and then I hope you will believe 
in my fairies. From the cold garden, you run into the 
house, and find the fire laid indeed in the grate, but 
the wood dead and the coal black, waiting to be 
lighted. You strike a match, and soon there is a 
blazing fire. Where does the heat come from ? Why 
does the coal burn and give out a glowing light ? Have 
you not read of gnomes buried down deep in the earth, 
in mines, and held fast there till some fairy wand 
has released them, and allowed them to come to earth 
again? Well, thousands and millions of years ago, 
this coal was plants, and. like the snowdrop in the 
garden of to-day, caught the sunbeams and worked 
them into leaves. Then the plants died and were 
buried deep in the earth and the sunbeams with them ; 
and like the gnomes they lay imprisoned till the coal 
was dug out by the miners, and brought to your grate ; 
and just now you yourself took hold of the fairy 
wand which was to release them. You struck a 
match, and its atoms clashing with atoms of oxygen 
in the 'air, set the invisible fairies' " heat " and " chemi- 
