When a plant first begins to peep into the world out of that wonder box we call the seed, it's the root, as we know, that does the peeping; it comes first. And its first business is to get a firm hold in the soil. So a lot of fine hairlike fibres grow right and left and all around and take a firm grip. There is an acid in the root that dissolves whatever the root touches that has any food in it--including pebbles and old bones--and so makes a kind of sticky stuff that hardens. In this way these fibrous roots not only get good meals for themselves and the rest of the plant, but they hold the plant firmly in the soil, against the strain of the winds. They also give the tap-root something to brace its back against, as it were, while it pushes down for water, for the moisture in the damper portion of the soil beneath. As you may have noticed, a seed merely lying loose on the ground is lifted up by its first little root in its effort to poke its nose into the soil. But Nature makes provisions for covering seeds up. They are covered by the castings of the earthworms, the dirt thrown out by burrowing animals and scratching birds. Some seeds fall into cracks where the ground is very dry and others are washed into them by the rains; while these as well as seeds lying on the surface are covered by the washings of the rain. Then come the roots that grip the soil. Always growing just back of the tip, are thousands of root-hairs, as fine as down. These get food from the soil. They soon disappear from the older parts of the root, so that it stops gathering food itself and puts in all its time passing along to the stem and leaves the food gathered by the finer and younger roots. This is why plants are so apt to wilt if you aren't careful when transplanting them; the root-hairs get broken off. For the same reason, corn, after it grows tall, is not ploughed deeply. The fine roots reach out between the rows and the ploughshare would cut them off. II. MR. ROOT'S PRESENCE OF MIND All these things and more the roots do in their daily work--in the ordinary course of business. And it's wonderful enough. Don't you think so? But there are even stranger things to tell; things that would almost make us believe roots have what in human beings we call "presence of mind." That is to say, the faculty of thinking just what to do when something happens that one isn't looking for; when the house takes fire, for example, or the baby upsets the ink. [Illustration: THREE SCHOOLS OF STRATEGY] A ROOT'S WAY OF CROSSING A ROAD