but which
upbraids us now we are no longer young.

And in a more work-a-day spirit Monday morning is sad. I think this is
so because the conception Next Week is full of the ghosts of dead
resolutions. No doubt it was on Monday mornings that Mr. Shandy renewed
his vow to have the hinge of the parlour door mended, which I think
remained unrepaired to the end of the book.

But after all, this gloomy point of view belongs to the onlooker, not to
the actors in the rhythm of things. Each particular Monday is a new-born
entity, and doubtless feels a pleasurable excitement in its brief life.
And to the actual snowdrops and winter aconites that pierce the cold
ground, spring is a new and glorious experience. In this academic
springtime (which chances to occur in autumn) the onlooker need have no
morbid feelings, only perhaps a touch of envy of those whose College life
begins to-day.

XIII
PICTURESQUE EXPERIMENTS

To those who have never made experiments on plants it may seem that
'picturesque' is an odd term to apply to laboratory methods. But to an
experimentalist the adjective does not seem overstrained. There is not
merely the pleasure of seeing a prediction verified--that may be
experienced in more everyday matters. There is a peculiar delight in the
discovery of a method of revealing some detail in the natural history of
living things. I remember vividly the pleasure which I felt when I first
tried the experiment on _Sorghum_, described in the essay on the
Movements of Plants in this volume. {210} I hoped that the seedlings
would curve in the elaborate manner shown in Fig. 4. But I had so little
expectation of success that I did not explain the object of the trial to
my laboratory assistant, and it came as a shock of delight when he told
me that the seedlings had "curled up like corkscrews." I do not think
that it is an exaggeration to say, that this result is a picturesque
illustration of the distribution of gravitational sensitiveness in
plants. The instances in the present essay are not concerned with the
movements of plants, and are so far less interesting, but I think the
reader will not refuse them the same adjective.

We all know that in plants--from the smallest weed to the giant trees of
America--there flows a stream of water from the root to the topmost leaf.
Nevertheless, it is an experience to have ocular proof of this
life-giving current. A branch of laurel is so arranged that it has