But though we cannot know what this wonderful
secret is, we can understand how great a difference there is between living
things and those which have never had any life in them. If you were to take
a pebble and hide it in the earth, you might water it every day, and the
sun might shine upon it, while you waited and waited till you were quite
old; but no change would come to the pebble, If you dug for it you would
find it a pebble still.
But with a plant, how different! See how those weeds in your garden grow.
You may cut them down, or bury them underground--do anything indeed except
pull them up by the roots--and still they will force their way through the
soil which you pressed down so tightly over them; their leaves will push
themselves up into the light and air, and their roots will strike deep into
the earth, for every bit of them is alive; as the "Song of the Crocus"
says--
"My leaves shall run up, and my root shall run down,
While the bud in my bosom is swelling."
Long ago, when I was a child, I saw a field covered with beautiful white
things, smooth and rounded like the top of an egg, which seemed to rise
here and there from the grass. They grew out of the ground, but yet they
did not look like any flowers I had ever seen. I was told that the pretty
white things were mushrooms, and that I might gather as many as I could in
my pinafore, and take them home for breakfast.
You may fancy how delightful it was to search about in the dewy grass,
every minute finding a mushroom finer and whiter than the rest; but what
puzzled me was the wonder of it--how had they all come there?
They had grown up in the night, I was told, while I had been asleep in
my bed; and I knew it must be so, for I had been in that field only the
evening before, and had seen nothing there but the sheep, eating the grass
and daisies.
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