Certain Siouan Indians think: "The stars are all deceased men. When a child is born, a star descends and appears on earth in human form; after death it reascends and appears as a star in heaven" (433. 508). How like this is the poet's thought:-- "Our birth, is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar." CHAPTER XI CHILDREN'S FLOWERS, PLANTS, AND TREES. As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourishes. --_Psalm_ ciii. 15. A child at play in meadows green, Plucking the fragrant flowers, Chasing the white-winged butterflies,-- So sweet are childhood's hours. We meet wi' blythesome and kythesome cheerie weans, Daffin' and laughin' far adoon the leafy lanes, Wi' gowans and buttercups buskin' the thorny wands-- Sweetly singin' wi' the flower-branch wavin' in their hands. Many savage nations worship trees, and I really think my first feeling would be one of delight and interest rather than of surprise, if some day when I am alone in a wood, one of the trees were to speak to me.--_Sir John Lubbock_. O who can tell The hidden power of herbs, and might of magic spell?--_Spenser_. _Plant Life and Human Life_. Flowers, plants, and trees have ever been interwoven with the fate of man in the minds of poets and folk-thinkers. The great Hebrew psalmist declared: "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth," and the old Greeks said beautifully, [greek: _oiæper phyllôn geneæ, toiæde kai andrôn_], "as is the generation of leaves, so is also that of men"; or, to quote the words of Homer (_Iliad_, vi. 146):-- "Like as the generation of leaves, so also is that of men; For the wind strews the leaves on the ground; but the forest, Putting forth fresh buds, grows on, and spring will presently return. Thus with the generation of men; the one blooms, the other fades away." One derivation (a folk-etymology, perhaps) suggested for the Greek [Greek: _anthropos_] connects it with [Greek: _anthos_], making _man_ to be "that which springs up like a flower." We ourselves speak of the "flower of chivalry," the "bloom of youth," "budding youth"; the poets call a little child a "flower," a "bud," a "blossom,"--Herrick even terms an infant "a virgin flosculet." Plants, beasts, men, cities, civilizations, grow and _flourish_; the selfsame words are applied to them all.