Minnesota Plant Life. 



25 



of nature. It is even so with men ; the dervishes of the Soudan 

 must give way before civiHzed England. Thus also must the 

 feeble plants of a meadow's edge yield before the onslaught of 

 trained roadside plants, brought in from other parts of the 

 world and fitted to cope with the conditions of existence in a 

 stronger and better way. As one looks at a placid meadow, its 

 grasses bending in the breeze, he should remember that under- 

 neath the calm serenity of the scene there is a bitter struggle, 

 a relentless internecine warfare between the plants that are 

 already in the meadow and those that are striving to enter 

 from without. 



Comparison of plants with animals. Next to and even 

 stronger than the instinct to exist is the instinct to persist, and 

 plants sacrifice their own lives for their offspring just as readily 

 in their sphere of life as will a human mother give up her life 

 for her child. In dealing with plants the mind must be rid of 

 the mistaken notion that they are dull, stupid things which stay 

 where they are set without ability to better themselves and 

 their offspring. On the contrary the plant should be regarded 

 as a living organism with definite necessities and definite in- 

 stincts. Plants are quite as much alive as animals, and, indeed, 

 they are greater ground-gainers on the surface of the earth 

 than animals are, for if all the plants of the world should be 

 weighed in one scale pan of a gigantic balance with all the ani- 

 mals in the other it would be seen that as organizers of dead 

 matter into living substance the plants far outrank the animals. 

 In dynamic force, in the ability to apply energy in some definite 

 direction, the animal is indeed superior, but in those purely con- 

 structive vital powers no organisms are so skillfully adapted and 

 so perfectly organized as the plants. They are not altogether 

 of a lower type of life than animals, for they do their work in 

 the world after their fashion, and that is all that animals can do. 

 They are rather to be viewed as other kinds of living things, 

 'and are to be regarded not as merely subservient to the needs of 

 animals, not solely as a food-supply for grazing cattle or roving 

 birds, but of interest for their own sake and possessing an indi- 

 viduality to be respected. 



