Gotthold's Emblems - Or Invisible Things Understood by Things That Are Made #223825

Experience shows that if you pluck a stalk of rye, strip it of the blossom, and hold it for a little in your hand, the blossom will come again. Conversing with a friend, to whom he had shown this, and who expressed his surprise at the fact, and his desire to know the cause, Gotthold said: In many things we observe a strong vegetative power. From the grain of corn in the ground nature elicits a shoot, and pushes it through the stiff crust of the earth, and then from the shoot a stalk, and from the stalk, an ear.