CHAPTER XIX. 



Cooperation of Plant Life. 



TOURING all the vast period of time since the first "Life 

 "^^^ Spark" came into being, there has been a community of 

 interest between all plant and animal life. Their progressive 

 struggles have been constant and contemporaneous. They 

 have marched hand in hand from the lowest to the highest 

 forms — each giving, each receiving from the other. With- 

 out this reciprocal arrangement, neither could long survive. 

 The algae is paired with the amoeba, the lowest forms of sea 

 weeds with the lowest forms of worms and protozoa, the 

 mosses and lichens with the trilobites and crinoids, the early 

 ferns with the flying insects and scorpions and so on through- 

 out the entire scale of life. 



The vegetable kingdom possesses powers which the ani- 

 mal kingdom does not have. The plants extract oxygen from 

 the air and mineral foods from the air and soil. They have 

 the power of forming protoplasm and of storing the sun's 

 energy in usable form. They provide the food such as nuts, 

 roots, fruits, grains and grasses upon which all animal life 

 must depend, while animal life in turn, through its bacteria, 

 worms, etc., recreates the dead plants into plant food. In 

 addition to this, the higher forms of animal life become dis- 

 tributors, transporters, and fertilizers of plants and seeds. 



As it required millions of years for the animals to reach 

 the stage of a backbone, so it required millions of years for 



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