Now what I want you to do is this: I want you to study carefully the different parts of these little creatures that are living out their strange, beautiful lives under your very eyes. I want you to watch them from day to day; to learn how they eat and drink and work and grow, until you feel that you know them really well. First let us look at this bean plant which is breaking its way through the earth. Just what do you see? You see what looks like a thick, green hoop (Fig. 105), do you not? What is it, this odd-looking hoop? [Illustration: FIG. 105] Perhaps some of you still think that it is the root, for I remember that I too once supposed the root was the part of the plant which first left the bean. But really this green hoop is made by the bent stem. We know that this is the stem because from its lower end grows the root, while from its upper part grow the leaves, flowers, and fruit. [Illustration: FIG. 106] Certainly it is curious, the way in which this bean plant comes into the world. Why does it not grow straight up and down, do you suppose?—up with its stem and leaves, and down with its root? But we must not forget that whenever some habit on the part of a plant has filled us with surprise, sooner or later we have discovered that the plant’s reason for it was a good one. [Illustration: FIG. 107] What reason can the bean plant have for coming into the world crooked? Before reading further, try to think this out for yourselves. Try each one of you to form an idea of what the bean plant gains by pushing through the earth with this hooped stem. I hope some of you may guess correctly. But even if you have not been successful in naming the cause of the bean plant’s humped back, at least you have been working your brains; and every time you do this, you help to keep them in good order. If you let your brain lie idle, and allow your teacher or your book to do for you not only all the asking of questions, but also all the thinking-out of answers, it will get as dull and rusty and good for nothing as a machine that is laid by for a long time gets dull and rusty and good for nothing. I should be sorry to think that any of you children were carrying about in your heads any such rusty, good-for-nothing brains. So if you wish to keep them bright and clean, and in good working order, you must try to do your own thinking. And now, hoping you have tried to guess for yourselves the reason of this crooked back, I will explain it to you. But first handle carefully the tip of one of the upper leaves on the larger bean plant. You see how delicate this is. Then feel how firm and hard and tough is the green hoop of the plant which is just breaking through the earth. Now suppose the bean plant had grown straight up into the air, would not its uppermost part have been the delicate leaf tips? Can you not see that these would have been too frail to work their way uninjured through the earth?