. The natural history of the farm; a guide to the practical study of the sources of our living in wild nature. Natural history. VII. THE EDIBLE WILD ROOTS OF THE FARM "The sunshine floods the fertile fields Where shining seeds are sown, And lo, a miracle is wrought; For plants with leaves wind-blown, By magic of the sunbeam's touch Take from the rain and dew And earth and air, the things of life To mingle them anew. And store them safe in guarding earth To meet man's hunger-need. Then lo, the wonder grows complete; The germ within the seed Becomes a sermon or a song, A kiss or kindly deed
. The natural history of the farm; a guide to the practical study of the sources of our living in wild nature. Natural history. VII. THE EDIBLE WILD ROOTS OF THE FARM "The sunshine floods the fertile fields Where shining seeds are sown, And lo, a miracle is wrought; For plants with leaves wind-blown, By magic of the sunbeam's touch Take from the rain and dew And earth and air, the things of life To mingle them anew. And store them safe in guarding earth To meet man's hunger-need. Then lo, the wonder grows complete; The germ within the seed Becomes a sermon or a song, A kiss or kindly ; —Dean Albert W. Smith. Nature sometimes caches her stores of provisions—^hides them underground. She puts them up in mold-proof packages, and stows them away in the earth, where, protected from sudden changes of temperature, they keep for along time. It is chiefly a few of the mammals that are the reci- pients of this bounty—those that can burrow in the soU and those that can root. The burrowers are numerous, and of very different sorts. They all have stout claws on their fore feet. The rooters are few: only the pigs and their nearest allies. These have a most unique and beautiful digging apparatus^ happily placed on the end of the , where it is backed by all the pushing power of a stout body, and where it is directed in its operations by the aid of very keen olfactories. This is a most efficient equipment for digging. If any- S8. Fig. 32. Nature's most efficient implement of tillage. But, alas! a little bit of metal ring thrust into the sensitive base of the "rooter'' renders this beautiful contrivanceinoperative, reduces the efficiency of his pigship to the com- mon level of mamma- lian kind, and leaves him endowed only with his Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original wo
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booky
