XI. You know that some seeds have wings or sails, by means of which they are transported by the winds over land and sea for very many miles. The thistle-down everybody is acquainted with. There is an eastern annual plant whose seeds are provided with wings, which, in a most curious manner, it only uses when it needs them, as you shall hear. It grows in the little pools that occur here and there in the deserts of Arabia, which, as you may suppose, in a hot climate and a sandy soil, are very apt to dry up at some seasons of the year. The seeds grow on the stalk enclosed in a roll of flaxen fibres, and when they are ripe they fall off, and if the water continues till the next year, they spring up close by where their parent plant lived. But should the pool dry up, the flaxen fibres become dry and spread out into wings, the wind takes hold of them, and away flies the seed till it reaches a more favoured spot. When it is lucky enough to get to the water, the pod speedily bursts open, and the seeds take root at the bottom. You see how, by a simple mechanical contrivance, this plant is enabled to do the same for the preservation of its species, as I told you the Actinia did by a very simple exercise of instinct, for the preservation of itself.
XII. Because you wonder at the works of creation, you feel a desire to search into them. You will find out many things, and you may learn to explain a great many things, the reasons of which you are ignorant of at present. Still, your wonder will not be satisfied; on the contrary, the further you go, the more it will be excited. You will have to go wondering on, but if you proceed in the right disposition, every addition to your knowledge will increase your admiration and love; for everything was made by the loving and wise God, and therefore the whole must necessarily be beautiful and harmonious, and there is nothing which has not its place to fill, and its part to act. May you, my little friends, ever keep in mind that you are not left out of this Divine Plan; and that there is a place to be filled, and duties to be performed, by each one of you, which are not left to a mechanical contrivance nor to animal instinct; but must be found out and fulfilled by a never dying Spirit, which must be conscious of what it is about, and is responsible to God for every action.
J. GREEN AND CO., PRINTERS, BARTLETT'S BUILDINGS.
WORKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY
DARTON AND CLARK,
HOLBORN HILL.
BIRDS AND FLOWERS;
AND OTHER COUNTRY THINGS.
BY MARY HOWITT.