ut its limitations and manifestations than they did. They have
even arrived at something like a proof that there is a fixed quantity of it
flowing out of things and into them. But, for the present, rest content
with the general and sure knowledge that, fixed or flowing, measurable or
immeasurable--one with electricity or heat or light, or quite distinct from
any of them--life is a delightful, and its negative, death, a dreadful
thing, to human creatures; and that you can give or gather a certain
quantity of life into plants, animals, and yourself by wisdom and courage,
and by their reverses can bring upon them any quantity of death you please,
which is a much more serious point for you to consider than what life and
death are.

12. Now, having got a quite clear idea of a root properly so called, we may
observe what those storehouses, refuges, and ruins are, which we find
connected with roots. The greater number of plants feed and grow at the
same time; but there are some of them which like to feed first and grow
afterwards. For the first year, or, at all events, the first period of
their life, they gather material for their future life out of the ground
and out {35} of the air, and lay it up in a storehouse as bees make combs.
Of these stores--for the most part rounded masses tapering downwards into
the ground--some are as good for human beings as honeycombs are; only not
so sweet. We steal them from the plants, as we do from the bees, and these
conical upside-down hives or treasuries of Atreus, under the names of
carrots, turnips, and radishes, have had important influence on human
fortunes. If we do not steal the store, next year the plant lives upon it,
raises its stem, flowers and seeds out of that abundance, and having
fulfilled its destiny, and provided for its successor, passes away, root
and branch together.

13. There is a pretty example of patience for us in this; and it would be
well for young people generally to set themselves to grow in a carrotty or
turnippy manner, and lay up secret store, not caring to exhibit it until
the time comes for fruitful display. But they must not, in after-life,
imitate the spendthrift vegetable, and blossom only in the strength of what
they learned long ago; else they soon come to contemptible end. Wise people
live like laurels and cedars, and go on mining in the earth, while they
adorn and embalm the air.

14. Secondly, Refuges. As flowers growing on trees have to live for s