When the dreary days of winter and the early damp days of spring
are passing away, and the warm bright sunshine has begun to pour
down upon the grassy paths of the wood, who does not love to go
out and bring home posies of violets, and bluebells, and
primroses? We wander from one plant to another picking a flower
here and a bud there, as they nestle among the green
leaves, and we make our rooms sweet and gay with the tender and
lovely blossoms. But tell me, did you ever stop to think, as you
added flower after flower to your nosegay, how the plants which
bear them have been building up their green leaves and their
fragile buds during the last few weeks? If you had visited the
same spot a month before, a few (of) last year's leaves,
withered and dead, would have been all that you would have found.
And now the whole wood is carpeted with delicate green leaves,
with nodding bluebells, and pale-yellow primroses, as if a fairy
had touched the ground and covered it with fresh young life. And
our fairies have been at work here; the fairy "Life," of whom we
know so little, though we love her so well and rejoice in the
beautiful forms she can produce; the fairy sunbeams with their
invisible influence kissing the tiny shoots and warming them into
vigour and activity; the gentle rain-drops, the balmy air, all
these have been working, while you or I passed heedlessly by;
and now we come and gather the flowers they have made, and too
often forget to wonder how these lovely forms have sprung up
around us.
Our work during the next hour will be to consider this question.
You were asked last week to bring with you to-day a primrose-
flower, or a whole plant if possible, in order the better to
follow out with me the "Life of a Primrose." (To enjoy this
lecture, the reader ought to have, if possible, a primrose-
flower, an almond soaked for a few minutes in hot water, and a
piece of orange.) This is a very different kind of subject from
those of our former lectures. There we took world-
wide histories; we travelled up to the sun, or round the earth,
or into the air; now I only ask you to fix your attention on one
little plant, and inquire into its history.