194 THE GARDENER. [May 



To be a brother to the insensible rock 

 And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 

 Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 

 Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould." 



In life, the animal subdues the plant ; when the former perishes, the 

 plant reasserts its power; and so there is afforded the example of 

 "two great dependent forces, mutually destructive, yet mutually 

 regenerative ; the one fixed to the soil would exhaust its resources of 

 fertility, but the destruction of animal life restores its exhausted powers, 

 and vegetable action goes on with renewed vigour." 



Thus plants may be said to fulfil a true and great vocation ; and 

 this high service has two aspects, the one as regards dead nature, the 

 other as regards living things. In its relations to dead nature, the 

 plant serves, while living, to purify the air we breathe. It continually 

 absorbs carbonic acid and gives off oxygen gas, and thus is a chief 

 instrument in maintaining the natural condition of the atmosphere. It 

 renders the air more fit for the support of animal life, both by remov- 

 ing that which is noxious, and by pouring into it that which is salutary 

 to animal health and life. And when it dies, it either covers the earth 

 with a vegetable mould, which favours the growth of new generations 

 of plants, or it accumulates into beds of peat or mineral coal, by which 

 man is long after to be warmed and the arts of life promoted. In 

 either case, it only lingers for a while in these less sightly mineral 

 forms. It gradually assumes again the gaseous state, and whether it 

 is allowed naturally to decay, or is burned in the fire, ultimately arises 

 again into the air in the form of carbonic acid. By this means, in 

 part, vegetation is perpetuated upon the globe, and the natural com- 

 position of the atmosphere, as regards the proportion of the carbonic- 

 acid gas, is permanently maintained. As regards living animals, we 

 all know and feel that plants are necessary to our daily life. Utterly 

 dry up and banish vegetation from a region, and nearly every sensible 

 form of animal life forthwith disappears. 



There are also subsidiary purposes the plant serves, and one of these 

 is that of covering and adorning dead nature. But this purpose is 

 only secondary, and, as it were, ornamental, and yet has issues closely 

 allied to sanitary purposes. One of these subsidiary purposes Mr 

 Ingram has alluded to in a suggestive passage of his address relating 

 to planting trees in our graveyards and cemeteries. Both the sanitary 

 reformer and the teacher of sesthetics are asking that our graveyards 

 be planted with trees ; the one for the sake of the great purpose plants 

 labour to fulfil as sanitary agents, the other as a means of ornament- 

 ation merely. 



