I was interested last autumn in the pathetic struggle of a humble little Chenopodium album that had started life late and under unfavorable circumstances. It came up in September under the north piazza near the beaten foot path; close up to the building. I was first attracted by the fact that, though it was not over a foot high, it had bloomed and was making seed at a desperate rate, while its sisters earlier in the season reached several feet in height before blooming. But, alas! for the vanity of the poor little creature, the cold weather during the Christmas holidays came on, and the steam being shut off, the side of the building grew cold and my struggling little friend was frozen, and soon its lifeless remains were the sport and derision of the rude January winds. I pitied the poor little vagabond despite the bad record of her family. Indeed plants, like people, must suffer sometimes because of an evil ancestry. In this case I was touched by the pathos of the situation, and really hoped the pertinacious little wretch might proudly scatter her well-matured seed upon the hard-beaten path as an inspiration to the many boys that passed daily, grumbling because of the hardness of their lot. But the only moral I can now draw is the foolishness of delaying in the right start. Sometimes the supply of light-energy is so great that the little chlorophyll machines cannot use it in their legitimate work, nor does the plant use it in preparing the warming-up color. Then the disc-shaped corpuscles turn their edges instead of their flat surfaces to the light, or sometimes move deeper down into the leaf. In some cases the leaf itself turns edgewise instead of broadside to the sun. There are many plants so constituted that they cannot live from year to year in our northern climate, and they must make some provision for preserving their species, and right cunningly do they do this. At a certain period of its growth the potato, for example, puts its starch-making machinery to work on full time, and hurries the starch down below the surface of the ground, and stores it up in what we call a tuber. These tubers have stored in them a number of embryo potato plants, whose lack-luster eyes we see peeping out on all sides. When the time for growth comes, the young plant starts with a reserve-food supply sufficient to keep it growing for some time. We have all noticed, no doubt, how large a plant will grow from a potato, even in a comparatively dark cellar. We must not think that tuber-bearing vines and nut-producing trees are actuated entirely by philanthropic motives. Each nut is the young tree sent forth with his patrimony strapped to his back, ready to make a good start in the world as soon as the favorable time comes. There are many devices for spending the winter that limits of time and space will prevent me writing about. Many of them more curious than the simple examples I have cited.