Now it makes a great deal of difference to a sprouting seed whether it is well or ill provided with such stored-up food-stuffs. Some very small seeds have hardly any provision to go on upon; and the seedlings of these, of course, must wither up and die if they do not catch the sunlight as soon as they have first unfolded their tiny leaflets; but other wiser plants have learnt by experience to lay by plenty of starches, oils, or other useful materials in their seeds; and wherever such a tendency has once faintly appeared, it has given such an advantage to the species where it occurred, that it has been increased and developed from generation to generation through natural selections. Now what such plants do for their offspring, the hyacinth, and many others like it, do for themselves. The lily family, at least in the temperate regions, seldom grows into a tree-like form; but many of them have acquired a habit which enables them to live on almost as well as trees from season to season, though their leaves die down completely with each recurring winter. If you cut open a hyacinth bulb, or, what is simpler to experiment upon, an onion, you will find that it consists of several short abortive leaves, or thick, fleshy scales. In these subterranean leaves the plant stores up the food-stuffs elaborated by its green portions during the summer; and there they lie the whole winter through, ready to send up a flowering stem early in the succeeding spring. The material in the old bulb is used up in thus producing leaves and blossoms at the beginning of the second or third season; but fresh bulbs grow out anew from its side, and in these the plant once more stores up fresh material for the succeeding year’s growth. The hyacinths which we keep in glasses on our mantelpieces represent such a reserve of three or four years’ accumulation. They have purposely been prevented from flowering, in order to make them produce finer trusses of bloom when they are at length permitted to follow their own free will. Thus the bulb contains material enough to send up leaves and blossoms from its own resources; and it will do so even if grown entirely in the dark. In that case the leaves will be pale yellow or faintly greenish, because the true green pigment, which is the active agent of digestion, can only be produced under the influence of light; whereas the flowers will retain their proper color, because their pigment is always due to oxidation alone, and is but little dependent upon the rays of sunshine. Even if grown in an ordinary room, away from the window, the leaves seldom assume their proper deep tone of full green; they are mainly dependent on the food-stuffs laid by in the bulb, and do but little active work on their own account. After the hyacinth has flowered, the bulb is reduced to an empty and flaccid mass of watery brown scales.