I have a great variety of little masses of matter--some small as a
pin's blunt point, and none of them bigger than a pin's head. They are
smooth, glossy, hard, exceedingly beautiful under the microscope, and
clearly distinguishable one from another. They have such intense
individuality, are so self-assertive, that by no process can those of
one kind be made to look or act like those of another. These little
masses of matter are centers of incredible power. They are seeds.
Select two for examination, and, unfolding, one becomes grass--soft,
succulent, a carpet for dainty feet, a rest for weary eyes, part food,
but mostly drink, for hungry beasts. It exhausts all its energy
quickly. Grass today is, and to-morrow is cut down and withered, ready
for the oven.
Try the other seed. It is of the pin head size. It is dark brown,
hard-shelled, dry, of resinous smell to nostrils sensitive as a bird's.
The bird drops it in the soil, where the dews fall and where the sun
kisses the sleeping princesses into life.
Now the latent powers of that little center of force begin to play.
They first open the hard shell from the inside, then build out an arm
white and tender as a nerve fiber, but which shall become great and
tough as an oak. This arm shuns the light and goes down into the dark
ground, pushing aside the pebbles and earth. Soon after the seed
thrusts out of the same crevice another arm that has an instinct to go
upward to the light. Neither of these arms is yet solid and strong.
They are beyond expression tender, delicate, and porous, but the one is
to become great roots that reach all over an acre, and the other one of
California's big trees, thirty feet in diameter and four hundred feet
high.
How is it to be done? By powers latent in the seed developing and
expanding for a thousand years. What a power it must be!
First, it is a power of selection--might we not say discrimination?
That little seed can never by any power of persuasion or environment be
made to produce grass or any other kind of a tree, as manzanita, mango,
banyan, catalpa, etc., but simply and only _sequoia gigantea_.
There are hundreds of shapes and kinds of leaves with names it gives
one a headache to remember. But this seed never makes a single
mistake. It produces millions of leaves, but every one is
awl-shaped--subulate. Woods have many odors--sickening, aromatic,
balsamic, medicinal. We go to the other side of the world to bring the
odor of sandal or camphor to our nostrils. But amid so many odors our
seed will make but one. It is resinous, like some of those odors the
Lord enjoyed when they bathed with their delicious fragrance the cruel
saw that cut their substance, and atmosphered with new delights the one
who destroyed their life. The big tree, with subtle chemistry no man
can imitate, always makes its fragrance with unerring exactness.
[Illustration: The Big Trees.]
There are thousands of seeds finished with a perfectness and beauty we
are hardly acute enough to discover. The microscopist revels in the
forms of the dainty scales of its armor and the opalescent tints of its
color. The sunset is not more delicate and exquisite. But the big
tree never makes but one kind of seed, and leaves no one of its
thousands unfinished.
The same is true of bark, grain of wood, method of putting out limbs,
outline of the mass, reach of roots, and every other peculiarity. It
discriminates.
But how does it build itself? Myriads of rootlets search the
surrounding country for elements it needs for making bark, wood, leaf,
flower, and seed. They often find what they want in other
organizations or other chemical compounds. But with a power of
analytical chemistry they separate what they want and appropriate it to
their majestic growths. But how is material conveyed from rootlet to
veinlet of leaf hundreds of feet away? The great tree is more full of
channels of communication than Venice or Stockholm is of canals, and it
is along these watery ways of commerce that the material is conveyed.
These channels are a succession of cells that act like locks, set for
the perpendicular elevation of the freight. The tiny boats run day and
night in the season, and though it is dark within, and though there are
a thousand piers, no freight that starts underground for a leaf is ever
landed on the way for bark or woody fiber. Freight never goes astray,
nor are express packages miscarried. What starts for bark, leaf,
fiber, seed, is deposited as bark, leaf, fiber, seed, and nothing else.
There are hundreds of miles of canals, but every boat knows where to
land its unmarked freight. Curious as is this work underground, that
in the upper air is more so. The tree builds most of its solid
substance from the mobile and tenuous air. Trees are largely condensed
air. By the magic chemistry of the sunshine and vegetable life the
tree breathes through its myriad leaves and extracts carbon to be built
into wood. Had we the same power to extract fuel from the air we need
not dig for coal.
In doing this work the power of life in the tree has to overcome many
other kinds of force. There is the power of cohesion. How it holds
the particles of stone or iron together! You can hardly break its
force with a great sledge. But the power of life in the tree, or even
grass, must master the power of cohesion and take out of the
disintegrating rock what it wants. So it must overcome the power of
chemical affinity in water and air. The substances it wants are in
other combinations, the power of which must be overcome.
Gravitation is a great power, but the thousand tons of this tree's vast
weight must be lifted and sustained in defiance of it. So for a
thousand years gravitation sees the tree rise higher and higher, till
the great lesson is taught that it is a weakling compared with the
power of life. There is not a place where one can put his finger that
there are not a dozen forces in full play, every one of which is
plastic, elastic, and ready to yield to any force that is higher. So
the tree stands, not mere lumber and cordwood, or an obstacle to be
gotten rid of by fire, but an embodiment of life unexhausted for a
thousand years. The fairy-fingered breeze plays through its myriad
harp strings. It makes wide miles of air aromatic. Animal life feeds
on the quintessence of life in its seeds. But most of all it is an
object lesson that power triumphs over lesser power, and that the
highest power has dominion over all other power.
The great power of vegetable life was shown under circumstances that
seemed the least favorable in the following experiment:
In the Agricultural College at Amherst, Mass., a squash of the yellow
Chili variety was put in harness in 1874 to see how much it would lift
by its power of growth.
[Illustration: Yellow Chili Squash in Harness.]
It was not an oak or mahogany tree, but a soft, pulpy, squashy squash
that one could poke his finger into, nourished through a soft,
succulent vine that one could mash between finger and thumb. A good
idea of the harness is given by the illustration. The squash was
confined in an open harness of iron and wood, and the amount lifted was
indicated by weights on the lever over the top. There were, including
seventy nodal roots, more than eighty thousand feet of roots and
rootlets. These roots increased one thousand feet in twenty-four
hours. They were afforded every advantage by being grown in a hot bed.
On August 21 it lifted sixty pounds. By September 30 it lifted a ton.
On October 24 it carried over two tons. The squash grew gnarled like
an oak, and its substance was almost as compact as mahogany. Its inner
cavity was very small, but it perfectly elaborated its seeds, as usual.
The lever to indicate the weight had to be changed for stronger ones
from time to time. More weights were sought. They scurried through
the town and got an anvil and pieces of railroad iron and hung them at
varying distances, as shown in the cut. By the 31st of October it was
carrying a weight of five thousand pounds. Then owing to defects of
the new contrivance the rind was broken through without showing what
might have been done under better conditions. Every particle of the
squash had to be added and find itself elbow room under this enormous
pressure. But life will assert itself.
[Illustration: Squash in Cage.]
No wonder that the Lord, seeking some form of speech to represent his
power in human souls, says, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." The
tremendous life of infinite strength surges up through the vine and out
into all branches that are really vitally attached. No wonder that
much fruit is expected, and that one who knew most of this imparted
power said, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."