Decay of leaves and plants.
What do you think becomes of all the leaves that fall, and of all the plants that die in the autumn? They are not lost. They decay and become a part of the earth. A great deal of the ground under your feet was once in the shape of stalks, and leaves, and flowers. And now the roots suck up from it sap to be made into the same shapes again. So you see that the dead plants and leaves of one year are used in making the plants and leaves of the years that come after.
Questions.—What is said of plants that die in the fall? Tell how it is with a tree in the winter. What does the warm weather do to its buds in the spring? Mention some plants that die down to the ground in the fall, but whose roots live through the winter. What is said of the life in these roots? What effect does the spring have on them? What becomes of all the leaves and plants that die in the fall?
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CONCLUSION.
Knowledge of nature increases our enjoyment of it.
So I have told you in this book many things about trees and plants. And I suppose that you will look at them with more pleasure now than you did before you knew so much about them. Almost every body says when looking at a handsome plant or tree, how beautiful it is! But you will say something more than this. You will say how beautiful and how wonderful too! You think of the sap going up and down in the pipes, of the busy mouths in the roots drinking it up from the ground, of the many different things that are made from the sap, of the beautiful leaves acting as the lungs of the plant, and of the leaf-buds from which the leaves are made. And because you know something about all these things, plants and trees look more beautiful to you than they ever did before.
You have always admired the weeping-willow with its long branches hanging almost to the ground. But you admire it much more now, because you think how wonderful it is that the sap circulates back and forth in the trailing branches. Follow it as I have told you that it goes, and see how wonderful the circulation of the sap is in this tree. It goes from the roots up through the trunk, and down the trailing branches to the very tips of the leaves; and then it mounts up again through other pipes in the branches to the trunk, that it may go down again to the roots. As you think of all this, do not the beautiful branches, as they swing back and forth in the wind, look more beautiful than ever?
Flowers and leaves.
You have always loved to look at flowers with their various colors. But now you love them more than ever, because you know something about how they grow, and what their colors and perfumes are made from, and many other interesting facts about them. Even fruits will, I think, taste better to you, for what you have learned about them in this book.