Just as this law operates,--continuously, silently, inexorably,--so
every other law makes itself felt in its own sphere. Gravitation is
simple. The law according to which an acorn makes an oak--and not a
pine-tree is complex. But the laws of Nature are all alike, and if we
understand the simple ones, we can at least partly comprehend the more
complex. They are nothing but fixed habits on a large scale.
So the acorns fell year by year and sprouted; and one out of a
thousand found good soil, and was not wasted, and made a tree. And so
all around (below) the tree with which we started there grew a grove
of oaks like it, in fact its children; and finally the original trees
died, but not without having left successors.
First of all, the green hillside is smooth and untrodden. There is
nothing but grass and flowers, borne there by the winds, which leave
no track. There is no animal life even in this secluded spot save the
birds, and they too leave no track. By and by there comes a hard
winter, or a dearth of food, and a pair of stray squirrels emigrate
from their home in the valley below; and the history of our hill and
its woods begins.
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