Accordingly the pine-seed was carried by the river in devious courses, thrown up on the bank, snatched away by the wind, rolled over the plains, cast up the mountain-side, tossed back into the fields, led here and there for an incalculable time, the sport of inapprehensible caprice. A hundred times it nearly fell into a spot favourable for taking root, and as often it was driven away from its goal by forces apparently hostile. If the little seed had been gifted with an observing sense it would probably have seen the lot and end of every event in its own destiny. Once it hung for years a few inches from a suitable hole in some fat land, and was left there unmoved by the fresh winds of spring-time, by the ardent summers, by the icy falls of snow. Nothing helped it; till finally a pebble slipped--for some unrecorded reason--picked it up on one of its muddy faces and held it there for weeks, to set it free again on a path of turf. Such incidents often happened, to make the seed entertain the common hope of its species, the chance of taking root; but always some unknown force dashed the near fulfilment from it. However, one morning, at the edge of a forest and on rain-softened ground, the sequoia seed at last got leave to germinate. The leave was given suddenly and precisely. A gust of wind, blowing across a dead calm, lifted it some hundreds of yards at a bound, and put it down on the slope of a mound of soil by an open hole. None the less the seed might have lain short of its place for years, for it was fixed firmly enough to nullify the impulse of the winds, and the many and various undulations of the ground-surface; but now at length its natural purpose was nearly achieved. A few minutes later a dung-beetle arrived, took it up between its claws, easily avoided the several obstacles of the mound, and dropped it, as though intelligently, on the very edge of the pit. The insect then, as in obedience to some non-apparent but exact will, began heedlessly to fill in the hole with rich earth. So from a little seed and a little soil there will be born here a _sequoia gigantea_, the hugest plant of earth. It seems a miracle that the future bulk of the tree, its grain, its pith, the shape and colour of its needles, the special nature of its sap, the many tens of hundreds of years of its life should be found in a pin-head of vegetable fibre; and another miracle that the microscopic seed should already contain not merely its plant's organic nature, but also its tastes and distastes, its pleasures and its pains, all the range of yet unformed impressions which would colour its existence in the world.