NETS AND TRAPS

II

These hairs or tentacles are always bathed in a sticky fluid which sparkles in the sunshine like dew. This gives the plants their pretty name, — sundew.

Every unwary insect that lights on the tentacles on the center of the leaf finds itself held, and the longer tentacles on the edge of the leaf begin to bend over it till it is shut in. In a moment it is smothered, and the fluid in the glands makes the leaf a stomach for digesting this food for the plant. You can see the sticky fluid without a microscope.

This seems a strange story for a pretty, innocentlooking plant. It belongs to a family of plants called insect eaters, a strange odd family for plant world. This shows that the getting of food is

the first law in the world of lower forms of life, and when one part is weak some other will find new powers.

The sundew way is to set traps.

VII. WINTER WRAPPINGS

ALL of us love winter if we are well and strong and if our clothing keeps the cold air from chilling us.

Seeds that drop into the earth are safe, for they are in tight cases or boxes, and snow makes a warm wrapping for the ground.

Having no tender flesh, the life in a seed may sleep till the right time comes to wake and grow.

There is another way for life to wait till winter has gone. Some plants keep the growth their stiff stems have made to support the new life of a new summer. All the shrubs and trees grow in this

way.

Before the autumn frosts come they get new buds ready for the coming year and wrap around them a kind of cover sealed tight from damp and frost. Each has its own material for these wraps; some are like skin and some like wool. Some are painted over with sticky fluid that grows as hard as glue.

In these winter cradles, carefully tucked in, hosts of sleeping buds are rocked by the winds and made safe from frost and rains and snows.

VIII. PLANTS OF THE WHOLE YEAR

OUR little soft-stemmed plants come as spring guests for a summer visit. We make much of them, for we know that autumn frost will blight them so that winter will show no trace of them. In the morning of the year they grow and flourish, but in the evening they are cut down and wither. This is the glory of the daisies and buttercups, of wheat, barley, corn, clover, etc.

The strong plants that learned the secret of keeping the stock of nourishment taken day by day and storing it in stiff, strong stems keep themselves in our remembrance all the year, even

though their tender tissues are destroyed. Like ships with all sails reefed these shrubs and trees wait for a favorable time for action again.

Adding strength year by year some of them come to be tall trees which, when their leaves are gone, make pretty pictures against the sky.

We may think of them as giving up their fresh foliage in gentle faith that summer will bring it back.

The rose and the oak tree stand all the winter with bare branches but a warm heart, and make no sign that they have buds of promise hidden close.

But this is not all that Nature can do with the gifts of life she holds. Winter would be bare and lonely with no trace of green. So in a few of her tree families she teaches another way. Their leaves stay closely curled or rolled so that they can hold all that summer brings and keep the trees green and fully clad for Christmas and the winter snow.

This is the glory of the evergreens.

The pine and cedar, the fir and hemlock are our winter heroes. After winter is over and all the world is robed in green, new leaves come to the evergreens and the old ones fall quietly and make a carpet of brown around the tree trunks.

IX. THE SONG OF THE PINE FOREST

THE pine forest is a wonderful place. The pine trees stand in ranks like the soldiers of some vast army, side by side, mile after mile, in companies and

regiments and battalions, all clothed in a sober uniform. of green and gray. But they are unlike soldiers in this, that they are of all ages and sizes; some so small that the rabbits easily jump over them in their play,