unadulterated sun and rain to
which they had access. At the summit all was focusing for the
consummation of existence: the little blossoms would soon open and
have their one chance. To all the winds of heaven they would fling out
wave upon wave of delicate odor, besides enlisting a subtle form of
vibration and refusing to absorb the pink light--thereby enhancing the
prospects of insect visitors, on whose coming the very existence of
this race of weeds depended.

Every leaf showed signs of attack: scallops cut out, holes bored,
stains of fungi, wreaths of moss, and the insidious mazes of
leaf-miners. But, like an old-fashioned ship of the line which wins to
port with the remnants of shot-ridden sails, the plant had paid toll
bravely, although unable to defend itself or protect its tissues; and
if I did not now destroy it, which I should assuredly not do, this
weed would justify its place as a worthy link in the chain of
numberless generations, past and to come.

More complex, clever, subtle methods of attack transcended those of
the mere devourer of leaf-tissue, as radically as an inventor of most
intricate instruments differs from the plodding tiller of the soil. In
the center of one leaf, less disfigured than some of its fellows, I
perceived four tiny ivory spheres, a dozen of which might rest
comfortably within the length of an inch. To my eye they looked quite
smooth, although a steady oblique gaze revealed hints of concentric
lines. Before the times of Leeuwenhoek I should perhaps have been
unable to see more than this, although, as a matter of fact, in those
happy-go-lucky days my ancestors would doubtless have trounced me
soundly for wasting my time on such useless and ungodly things as
butterfly eggs. I thought of the coming night when I should sit and
strain with all my might, striving, without the use of my powerful
stereos, to separate from translucent mist of gases the denser nucleus
of the mighty cosmos in Andromeda. And I alternately bemoaned my
human limitation of vision, and rejoiced that I could focus clearly,
both upon my butterfly eggs a foot away, and upon the spiral nebula
swinging through the ether perhaps four hundred and fifty light-years
from the earth.

I unswung my pocket-lens,--the infant of the microscope,--and my whole
being followed my eyes; the trees and sky were eclipsed, and I hovered
in mid-air over four glistening Mars-like planets--seamed with
radiating canals, half in shadow from