When the spores are fully ripe, and ready for dispersion, the band, which has hitherto been bent around them, springs open with great suddenness and force, tearing the enclosing membrane and casting them forth upon the breeze, to undergo in their turn all the changes we have traced, or, as must be the case with multitudes, such are the countless numbers in which they are produced, to perish, humanly speaking, with all the beautiful possibilities of their nature for ever lost.
The botanist is led away from care, not merely into holes and corners—
"Brimful dykes and marshes dank"—
but to glorious vales and to mountain tops, where fresh health-laden breezes play around him, and he can delight in scenes of grandeur and loveliness to a degree which only a true lover of nature knows.
A poet I have read gave sweet expression to thoughts and feelings which I have often shared, when he wrote thus:—
"Oh! God be praised for a home
Begirt with beauty rare,
A perfect home, where gentle thoughts
Are trained 'mid scenes so fair;
"And where (God grant it so) the heart
That loves a beauteous view,
The while it grows in truth and taste
May grow in goodness too.
"For 'tis my creed that part to part
So clingeth in the soul,
That whatsoe'er doth better one,
That bettereth the whole.
"And whoso readeth nature's book,
Widespread throughout the earth,
Will something add unto his love
Of wisdom and of worth."
Happy are those who can find relief from the worry and turmoil of business in the observation and study of the myriad forms of life which flourish upon the earth, or whose record is laid up within its rocks. But blessed is he who, from the contemplation of objects so varied, wonderful, and beautiful, can with a full heart look upward to a God reconciled in Christ, and in reverential and loving worship exclaim, "My Father made them all!"
CHAPTER XXVII.
On the "War-path."—Rabbit-shooting.—Flapper-shooting.—Duck-shooting.—Wood-pigeons.—Life in an Oak-tree.—Burying-beetles.—Lace-wing Fly.—Stag-beetle.—Hair-worm.