There is a beautiful little French story which has been translated into English, and called "Picciola," the Italian for little flower. It is the story of a French nobleman who was thrown into prison on an unjust charge of plotting against the government of his country. He was a man of talent and education, as well as of wealth and position. Somehow, with all his life had given him, it had never taught him to look with open eyes at nature, or to see beyond nature a God who had created it.
He was restless and impatient in his close cell and the little strip of court-yard where he paced up and down, and up and down, in his misery, longing to be free. One day he saw between the heavy paving-stones of the yard the earth raised up into a tiny mound. His heart bounded at the thought that some of his friends were digging up from below to reach him, and give him his liberty again.
But when he came to examine the spot closely he found it was only a little plant pushing the earth before it in its effort to reach the light and the air. With the bitter sense of disappointment which this discovery brought, he was about to crush the little intruder with his foot, and then a feeling of compassion stopped him, and its life was spared.
The plant grew and throve in its prison, and the Count de Charney became every day fonder of his fellow-prisoner; he spent hours, which had before been empty, watching it as it grew and developed, until it became the absorbing interest of his life. As he watched it day by day, and saw the contrivances by which it managed to live and grow, he was compelled to believe that there must be somewhere a great and wonderful power that could design and make so marvellous a thing. The little flower was like a little child taking him by the hand; and leading him away from his dark, bitter, unbelieving thoughts into the light of God's love.
I want to take some common flower, something you have seen a hundred times every summer of your lives, and show you a few of the marvellous contrivances that make it able to live and grow and bear blossoms and fruit. If you will study them closely for a while, it will not seem so strange then that the Count de Charney, who had lived so many years without learning anything of the wonders of nature, should have had them opened for him by one little flower that he had carefully watched and studied.
Most plants are alike in having roots, stems, and leaves, and some sort of flower and seed-vessel. But the parts look so very different in different plants that it is sometimes a little hard to tell which is which. In some the roots grow in the air, and in others the stems grow underground. It is only by studying what the parts do that it is possible to be sure what they are. The most important part of every living thing is its stomach, because everything that lives must eat and drink, or die. There are some very curious plants which have regular stomachs into which their food goes, just as it does in an animal, and is digested, but these are not very common. Some day, however, when we have learned a little more about simpler things, I mean to tell you something about these strange plants. Ordinary plants have roots to supply them with food and water in the place of a stomach.
Fig. 1.—Corn and Magnified Root.
1, Corn four days planted: r r, Roots; l, Leaf; a, Grain of corn; 2, Root magnified; c, Root cap; g, Growing point.
Let us study the roots of some plant. Almost anything will do. If you can do so, get a hyacinth glass and bulb. The bulb is the root, and looks very much like an onion; the glass is a vase made for the purpose of growing hyacinths in water. It slopes in from the bottom upward, and then bulges out suddenly. The bulb rests in this bulging part, and has water below it and around its lower part. The glass being clear, you can see the roots grow as plainly as you can see a leaf or a flower bud unfold. Perhaps you have no hyacinth glass, and can not get one; then try to make one for yourself out of a small glass jar. There will certainly be a pickle bottle or a preserve jar about the house that will answer perfectly well. All you want is to have the bulb rest half in and half out of the water, with room below for the roots to spread through the water. Be careful to keep the water up to the right mark by adding a little every day as the plant soaks it up.
Or you may take a dozen grains of seed corn, soak them overnight, and then plant them an inch deep in a box, having about six inches or more depth of good earth. In about three days the blade will come above ground. Put your hand or a trowel down beside one of the plants, and scoop it gently up. Be sure you make your hand or trowel go away down below where the seed was planted, so as not to bruise the tender growth. Shake and blow the dust away, and you will see several little white thread-like roots coming from the grain. If you take up in this way all the young plants, one or two every day, you will see how they sprout and grow.