That is, no colour. The very grass is not green at night.
Oh, but it is if you look at it with a lantern.
No, no. It is the light of the lantern, which happens to be strong enough to make the leaves look green, though it is not strong enough to make a geranium look red.
Not red?
No; the geranium flowers by a lantern look black, while the leaves look green. If you don’t believe me, we will try.
But why is that?
Why, I cannot tell: and how, you had best ask Professor Tyndall, if you ever have the honour of meeting him.
But now—hark to the mowing-machine, humming like a giant night-jar. Come up and look at it, and see how swift and smooth it shears the long grass down, so that in the middle of the swathe it seems to have merely fallen flat, and you must move it before you find that it has been cut off.
Ah, there is a proof to us of what men may do if they will only learn the lessons which Madam How can teach them. There is that boy, fresh from the National School, cutting more grass in a day than six strong mowers could have cut, and cutting it better, too; for the mowing-machine goes so much nearer to the ground than the scythe, that we gain by it two hundredweight of hay on every acre. And see, too, how persevering old Madam How will not stop her work, though the machine has cut off all the grass which she has been making for the last three months; for as fast as we shear it off, she makes it grow again. There are fresh blades, here at our feet, a full inch long, which have sprung up in the last two days, for the cattle when they are turned in next week.
But if the machine cuts all the grass, the poor mowers will have nothing to do.