Tea, coffee, cocoa, and wine are pleasant because plants have produced some essence which is found useful and agreeable by mankind. Even water would be tasteless and unwholesome were it not for the minute diatoms and other microscopic vegetables in it.

But those who take an interest in flowers and leaves for themselves, find that they need never spend a dull hour in the country. There is so much to see and to find out, even in the commonest weed or the tiniest floweret.

But it is necessary to sympathize with them, to try to look at things from their point of view, and not merely from an artistic or collector's standpoint.

The romance of plant life then becomes a fascinating and engrossing pursuit. But however long one studies it, the knowledge that the wisest naturalist can ever attain to must remain a negligible quantity compared with what he does not know.

Suppose a mouse happened to stray into the office of the editor of the Times, he might boast to his fellow-mice of his knowledge of the "higher journalism," but his opinions would not really be of very great value on the subject.

However hard we study, and however much we observe and reflect upon the working of this great world of Nature, we really cannot expect to know more relatively than that little mouse.

In fact, the more we think, the more humble men of heart we become, and the greater also should be our reverence for the Creator of this wonderful universe.

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