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PEESCE OF MERCY. 381
the lungs, and plants are fed with phosphorus and
carbon, and the alkalies and silex. Let it decom-
pose them, analyze them, torture them in all the
ways it knows. The net result of each is a little
sugar, a little fibrin, a little water—carbon, potassium,
sodium, and the like—one cares not to know
what.
"We hide them in the ground ;
and
the slight rains
moisten them, and the sun shines upon them, and
little slender shoots spring up and grow ; and what
a miracle is the mere growth !
the force, the power,
the capacity, by which the little feeble shoot, that a
small worm can nip off with a single snap of its
mandibles, extracts from the earth and air and water
the different elements with which it increases in sta-
ture, and rises imperceptibly toward the sky
One grows to be a slender, feeble stalk, like an
ordinary weed; another a strong bush, armed with
thorns, and sturdy enough to bid defiance to the
winds ; the third a tender tree, subject to be blighted
by the frost, and looked down upon by all the forest
while another spreads its rugged arms abroad, and
cares for neither frost nor ice, nor the snows that for
months he heaped around its roots.
But lo ! out of the brown foul earth, and colorless
invisible air, and limpid rain-water, the chemistry of
the seeds has extracted colors—four different shades
of green, that paint the leaves, which put forth in
the spring upon our plant, our shrub, and our trees.
Later still come the flowers—the vivid colors of the
!
;