If you look in the margin of your
Bible, you will see that it is there called "tender grass." You might
perhaps think there is not much difference; but words, which are the names
of things, are very strong for good or evil. And especially in reading the
Bible, it is important to get the very best English word that can be found
for the Hebrew words which we could not understand. The verse has been more
exactly turned from Hebrew into English in this way: "And God said. Let the
earth sprout forth with tender grass."
This word "tender grass" is not the same as that which is used in a Psalm
which the children were just then learning, where we read that God "causeth
the grass to grow for the cattle." It means rather "the plant that shoots"
out of the ground, and would apply to any green thing just sprouting. It is
thought that in the word are included all those plants such as mosses and
mushrooms, whose flowers are invisible, and which multiply not by producing
seed, but by budding, or by means of little living particles, looking like
brown dust, which botanists call "spores."
These flowerless plants are of much simpler structure than those which have
root, stem, leaf and flower, and produce plants of their own kind by means
of their seeds. If you look at the back of a common fern, you will see
brown specks, not bigger than silkworms' eggs, beautifully arranged upon
it. Each of these is a collection of little cases containing spores, which
by-and-by will split open, allowing the spores to fall into the ground.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142