d under the branches to fill his basket with
peaches or bunches of figs. For wise men it is no more difficult to
think of a growing engine than of a growing oak. What if to-morrow an
engineer should plant a cannon ball. Having watered it well and kept
the ground loose through hoe or spade, suppose that when a few weeks
have passed the outline of a smokestack should push through the soil,
to be followed a little later by a rudimentary steam whistle, the
outlines of a boiler, and, rising through the sod, rude drive-wheels,
piston-rods and cylinders, until after six months the great engine
should stand forth in full completion. This phenomenon would be no
more wonderful than that which actually goes on before man's blind
eyes, when a tiny seed enlarges into the big tree of California and
constructs a vegetable engine that lifts thousands of hogsheads of
water up to the topmost boughs without any rattle of chains or the din
of machinery.

With difficulty man constructs that musical instrument called a
mouthharp, but nature, in six weeks, out of a little blue or brown egg
constructs a feathered music-box that automatically conveys itself from
tree to tree. But the mystery that has gone on in that tiny blue egg
lying in the nest is just as great as if some housewife had planted an
old spinning-wheel in the full expectation of reaping a Jacquard loom,
or had buried a jew's-harp in the garden expecting in the fall to pick
a grand piano. To the mystery that is involved in enlargement by
growth must be added the mystery of intelligence. It is not an easy
thing for an expert housewife, using the same formula, always to
achieve the same happy results in the white loaf. He who plants a
strawberry seed will find that the tiny seed will construct a plant,
lay in the red tints according to rule and mix the flavor of the berry
to a nicety that is the despair of the chef. In the tropic forests
there is a flower with a deep cup and the pollen at the bottom. This
pollen lies upon a little platter, and underneath the platter is that
form of trap known as a figure four, much loved by boys. When the bee,
creeping down into the flower, touches that platter, it springs the
trap that throws the fertilizing pollen upon the legs of the bee, to be
conveyed to the next flower. Wise men can, indeed, imitate this
device, but a single seed will in a few months construct many scores of
these mechanical devices. To-morrow morning the embryol