147 



Some plants, on the other hand, seem to have a special affinity 

 for one another, and will grow side by side in the happiest manner, 

 and take an equal share of nutriment from any manure that may be 

 applied. This is owing to the fact that the mnjor requirements of 

 such plant from the soil are dissimilar, and it is only such classes of 

 plants that may be placed together. We shall find many instances of this, 

 if we enter virgin forest and note the class of trees growing together. 

 In the Pine Forests of North America, but few seedlings trees of the 

 same kind are to be found and these are sure to be poor and weak. 

 The reason is, that the ground is already taken up by their parents 

 and the nutriment in great part abstracted from the soil, besides 

 which the young plants are deprived by their seniors of the necessary 

 amount of light and shade they require. Plants in such situations, 

 are also attacked by numerous diseases, especially those caused by 

 fungi, which, after first living upon the decaying matter falling from 

 the large trees, become parasitic, and kill or murder the smaller plants. 

 If, however, the seeds from the Pine .Forests are carried into sections 

 on Avhich oak, beech, birch or any other hard wood grows, they will 

 succeed rapidly and well, and vice versa, and moreover if the forest of pine 

 is cut, the under wood or natural growth which follows is rarely of the 

 same character as that which previously stood there, but of an exactly 

 opposite character. The oak and birch succeeding the pine and spruce, 

 and the pine and spruce succeeding the oak and birch, thus giving one 

 of the clearest possible lessons on the absolute necessity for alterna- 

 tion of crojjs. 



Robbery and murder are also committed by plants in ways other 

 than by the system of starvation. The " Matapalo" (local name for 

 almost any kind of large climbing plant of the genera Ficus, Clusia, 

 &c,) wraps itself round its victim, and fFeotually throttles and strangles 

 it, by the exclusion of air, and by the centripetal pressure which it 

 exerts. 



The plants of the Order, Loranthacea, are also familiar pirates 

 or robbers in West Indian fields. 



These are most destructive parasites and fasten upon and abstract 

 the juices of plants in a most destructive way, in fact they are the 

 most desti'uctive that we have to contend with in the West Indies. 

 They specially affect Orange trees and Casuarinas, &c., and besides, 

 attack very many of the indigenous forest trees. These are the real 

 and true parasitic growths that do real harm to cultivated trees in the 

 open, and they should at once be removed as soon as seen in all culti- 



