Take the case of tree roots crossing a country road for a drink of water. They do it just as you or I would, I'll be bound. Just suppose you and I were roots of a big tree that wanted to reach the moist bank of a stream, and there was a hard road-bed between. We can't go over the top, and the road-bed is so hard we can't go straight through on our natural level so we'll just stoop down and go under, won't we? That's exactly what the roots do. They dip down until they get under the hard-packed soil, and then up they come again on the other side and into the moist bank they started for. The roots of each kind of plant or tree have their natural level; that's one reason, as we know, why so many different kinds of plants--grass, trees, bushes, and things--get on so well together in the fields and woods. The tree roots that we have just seen crossing the road only went down below their natural level because they had to, as if the tip said: "This soil is too hard. We can never get through. Bend down! Bend down!" So the roots bent down until they came to softer soil, then forward, but always working up toward their natural level, and so it was at their natural level they came out on the other side. A ROOT'S STRANGE ADVENTURE WITH A SHOE But here's an example of "presence of mind," that nobody has accounted for. A good-sized root, working along through the soil, like Little Brother Mole, to earn its board and keep, came right up against the sole of somebody's old shoe that had got buried in the soil. In the sole were a lot of holes where the stitches used to be. The root divided into many parts, and many of these smaller roots found their way through the stitch holes. Then, coming out on the other side, these little roots got together and travelled on, side by side! [Illustration: HOW THE RAG BABIES TELL THE FORTUNE OF THE SEED CORN In what is popularly called "the Rag Baby Test" the seed corn is placed on squares marked on cloth with numbers corresponding to the numbered ears. Then they are rolled up in one of those moistened rags until they sprout.] Isn't that a story for you? But there's no accounting for it. As we have seen, the men of science know a little bit about how a root manages to turn round and round and away from the light and so on, but what kind of machinery or process is it that could tell the root if it would split up into little threads it could get through the stitch holes in that old boot? You can't imagine; at least, nobody so far has thought how it was done. But it's all true. We'll find the story and a lot of other things about the ways of roots in one of the books we'll get acquainted with when we come to the "Hide and Seek." [Illustration: © _International Harvester Company_ THIS IS THE ANSWER The seed from Ear No. 12 came out beautifully, didn't it? That from Ear No. 13 looks as if they were superstitious in Corn Land; but of course it was the fault of the seed and not of the number.]