Try this for yourselves next summer. I think you will be pleased with this pretty arrangement. We learned that the potato, even though it is buried in the earth and does not look like it, is really one of the thickened stems of the potato plant. The “eyes” of the potato look as little like buds as the potato itself looks like a stem. Yet these “eyes” are true buds; for, if we leave our potatoes in the dark cellar till spring, the “eyes” will send out slender shoots in the same way that the buds on the branches of trees send out young shoots. As I told you before, the usual place for a bud is just between the stem and the leafstalk, or the scar left by the leafstalk; but if a stem is cut or wounded, oftentimes it sends out buds in other than the usual places. This habit accounts for the growth of young shoots from stumps of trees, and from parts of the plant which ordinarily do not give birth to buds. Some buds never open while fastened to the stem of the parent plant; but after a time they fall to the ground, strike root, and send up a fresh young plant. The tiger lily, the plant that grows so often in old gardens, bears such buds as these. We call them “bulblets” when they act in this strange fashion. Perhaps even more surprising than this is the fact that leaves sometimes produce buds. [Illustration: FIG. 132] In certain warmer countries grows a plant called the _Bryophyllum_. If you look carefully at the thick, fleshy leaves of this plant, along its notched edges you will see certain little dark spots; and if you cut off one of these leaves and pin it on your window curtain, what do you suppose will happen? Well, right under your eyes will happen one of the strangest things I have ever seen. From the row of dark spots along the leaf’s edge, springs a row of tiny, perfect plants (Fig. 132). And when these tiny plants are fairly started, if you lay the leaf on moist earth, they will send their roots into the ground, break away from the fading leaf, and form a whole colony of new plants. Now, those dark spots along the leaf’s edge were tiny buds; and the thick leaf was so full of rich food, that when it was broken off from the parent plant, and all of this food was forced into the buds, these were strong enough to send out roots and leaves, and to set up in life for themselves. It will not be difficult for your teacher to secure some of these leaves of the _Bryophyllum_, and to show you in the schoolroom this strange performance. All children enjoy wonderful tricks, and I know of nothing much prettier or more astonishing than this trick of the _Bryophyllum_. PART V—LEAVES [Illustration: Decoration] HOW TO LOOK AT A LEAF To-day we begin to learn what we can about the leaves of plants. I hope that enough fresh green leaves have been brought to school to allow every child here to have one on the desk before him, so that he may see, as far as is possible, just what is being talked about.