Groups into Which Plants Naturally Fall 461 



have been separated from the Dicotyledons through an early 

 partial return to a water habit. Both of these sub-groups are 

 distinguished for the most part by insect-pollination, with its 

 correlated floral showiness; and so much more effective and 

 economical is this insect-pollination than wind-pollination that 

 the Flowering trees, — ^Locusts, Magnolias, and most Fruit trees, — 

 are slowly driving the wind-pollinated kinds from the earth. 

 This insect-pollination, moreover, with which naturally goes 

 animal-dissemination, renders the plants independent of exposure 

 to winds for both pollination and dissemination, and hence capable 

 of growing in all kinds of retired and lowly situations. Therefore 

 there exist not only Flowering shrubs, which can grow as under- 

 growth in successful competition with the Fern-plants, but also 

 Flowering herbs, which can grow in all sorts of places, even in 

 competition with the carpeting Moss-plants, with the Water- 

 plants, and with, the Parasites. 



We turn now to the place of the Seed-plants in our tree of 

 descent (figure 177). Among the branches produced by the 

 Fern-plants must have been one with a wind-carried, tube- 

 producing, pollen-grain, — a discovery, or invention, which ren- 

 dered its possessors independent of the standing water needed by 

 the Fern-plants for fertilization, thus enabling them to range far 

 more freely over the earth. Such was the origin of the Seed- 

 plants, w^hich swung into the main line of dominance, where they 

 persist to this day. The first kinds were undoubtedly trees, — 

 Gymnosperms and wind-pollinated Angiosperms, — whose exact 

 relations to one another are still very uncertain; but from the 

 latter originated the insect-pollinated kinds, first trees, then 

 shrubs, then herbs. These latter possess all of the advantages of 

 the lower groups in addition to their own, — are the heirs of all 

 the ages in fact; and their higher organization is permitting them 

 to do precisely the same thing that the higher races of men are, — 

 to take possession of the earth to the suppression and extinction 

 of the lower races. 



