Davy was looking at the little round, brown kernels that the Chief Gardener had said were radish seeds, and the light little flakes that were to grow into lettuce. "What makes seeds so different?" he asked soberly. "Ah, Davy, that is a hard question," answered the Chief Gardener. "A great many very great people have tried to answer it." He opened a little paper and held it out for them to see. "What funny little feather-tops!" said Prue. "Like little darts," said Davy. "What are they?" "Marigold seeds. They are very light, and the little tufts or wings are to carry them through the air, so they will be scattered and sown by the wind. Many seeds are given wings of different kinds. Maple seeds have a real pair of wings. Others have a tuft of down on them, so light that they are carried for miles. But many seeds are hard to explain. Plants very nearly alike grow from seeds that are not at all alike, while plants as different as can be grow from seeds that can hardly be told apart, even under the magnifying-glass." The pots filled with the warm earth were brought up and ranged in the windows. "How deep, and how many seeds in a pot?" asked Davy. "That depends," the Chief Gardener answered. "I believe there is a rule that says to plant twice as deep as the seed is long, though sweet-pease and some other things are planted deeper; and you may plant more seeds than you want plants, so that enough are pretty sure to grow; four beans in each pot, Davy--two white and two colored, and three grains of corn in the large center pot." The children planted the seeds--the Chief Gardener helping, showing how to cover them with fine earth--the corn and beans quite deeply, the sweet-pease still deeper, fully an inch or more, the smaller seeds thinly and evenly: then how to pat them down so that the earth might be lightly but snugly packed about the sleeping seeds. "Now we will dampen them a little," he said, "and when they feel their covering getting moist, perhaps they will think of waking." So he brought a cup of warm water, and the children dipped in their fingers and sprinkled the earth in each pot until it was quite damp. Then they drew up chairs and sat down to look at their garden, as if expecting the things to grow while they waited. IV I THINK SEEDS KNOW THE MONTHS BUT the seeds did not sprout that day, nor the next, nor for many days after they were planted. Prue and Davy watered them a little every morning, and were quite sure the room had been warm, but it takes sunshine, too, to make seeds think of waking from their long nap, and the sun does not always shine in January. Even when it does, it is so low in the sky, and stays such a little time each day, that it does not find its way down into the soil as it does in spring and summer time. "You said that corn sprouts in a week," said Davy to the Chief Gardener, one morning, "and it's a week to-day since we planted it, and even the radishes are not up yet."