New Thought Archives at New Thought Library

layers of the leaf, or wrapping the leaf around them.

The action at times is much more special, as in the oak-ball. When the oak-leaf is stung by the favored insect, it takes on a new form of growth which has exclusive reference to the wants of the animal. It results in a ball admirably fitted to the protection of the egg. The egg is left at its centre, and first enclosed with hard woody fibre. This is surrounded by a loose, moss-like growth, and the whole is enclosed with a tough paper-like covering. And so the ball, finished and sealed, hangs pendulous, waiting the new life.

§ 7. An equally remarkable and purely intellectual idea which pervades the vegetable kingdom is beauty, beauty in form, arrangement, color; beauty in detached parts and in masses. No considerable portion of this beauty admits of explanation other wise than as a product of mind addressed to mind. It springs primarily out of the symmetrical tendency which characterizes nearly every form of life, and secondarily out of rare relations and combinations of forms and colors quite exceeding any purpose subserved in the mechanical disposition of parts.

The inexplicable symmetry which expresses itself in an elm, a pine, a spruce, is the grand emotional power of this great kingdom. To this there is added a more narrow and delicate symmetry and oftentimes an exquisite finish of parts in the outlines of leaves, in the forms and colors of flowers. Observe, for instance, the outline of the clover-leaf as further emphasized by the shades of color within