Why, you say, the frost has killed them. But that does not at all tell what has become of them. Besides, the frost did not kill the snowdrops and crocuses and blood roots and spring beauties nor Jack-in-the-Pulpit nor the umbrella leaves of the mandrakes. Yet they are all gone. All we can find of Jack and the mandrakes are red berries and yellow apples. Not a sign of the snowdrops or spring beauties or crocuses is left. If you will just step down with me under the earth a few inches I will show you something. Make believe you are a gnome or a fairy and can see as well in the dark earth as anywhere else and come along. Now look about. Did you ever dream of anything so cunning in all your life? Everywhere and everywhere old mother earth is packed full of little white and brown bulbs. [Illustration: [Flower]] There they are as snug as peas in a pod, thousands of them, in every direction as far as you can see. And besides these bulbs, there are thick, fleshy root stems, red and brown and yellow, everywhere and everywhere. Do you want to know who they are? They are our little friends of the early summer,—snowdrops and crocuses and spring beauties and dogtooth violets; mandrakes, too, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit. These bulbs and thick roots are full of plant food; and this is where the plant has gone to. It has curled up, so to speak, in these bulbs and roots and gone to sleep till next spring. Then it will wake up. It will hardly wait for the snow to go off before it pushes out a bud. The snowdrop does not wait, but sometimes blossoms right under the snow. In a few days the woods that looked so dead and bare are as gay as you please. That is because the plants sleeping in the bulbs and thick underground stems have waked up. They have eaten the rich food stored up there and have grown like magic. Up into the sunshine they spring; they wave sweet flowers; they call the little insects that have ventured out to come and taste their nectar and bring them pollen. Their leaves are green and delicate, but they work hard, for the plants have used up the food in the bulbs or in the thick underground stems, and the leaves and roots must make new bulb material or store away more food in the thick underground parts. It is spring, and the air is moist and warm. It rains often, and the plants have all the water they need. What fun it must be to come out in the world! What joy to unfold bright flowers in the shadowy woods! They dance on their stems and ripen their seeds; before the slow roses have thought of opening their eyes, the bulb people and the underground-stem people have done all their work of growing. The seeds are ripe and ready to be scattered; new bulbs are packed full of plant food, and fresh food is stored in the thick underground stems. The bulb people and the underground-stem people have had a good time. They were up early in the summer and saw the sweet, fresh world; their leaves worked hard, and their work is all done now.