HOW PLANTS SPREAD AND MULTIPLY 33 
When it comes to a contest between whole families of 
plants, the competition is far keener. Just as we have 
to fight for our share of whatever work, trade, or practice 
there may be in a town, so plant fights with plant, and 
as nations have to compete for wider lands for their 
children, so do all the races of plants. But in the 
latter case the number of competitors is infinitely larger. 
Some plants have far more seeds than others, but we 
will take as an example the Henbane, a weed you may 
find in rich and damp soils, which has a comparatively 
small family. The number of the seeds has been care- 
fully counted, and an average number of seeds for one 
healthy plant is actually ten thousand. The common 
shepherd’s purse, by-the-by, which you may find any- 
where by the wayside, rejoices in an average family of 
six times the size. Well, if all the ten thousand children 
grew up in the next year, and each repeated the perform- 
ance, and so on, how long do you think it would be before 
every part of the dry land was covered with henbane 
plants to the number of sixty to the square yard? Just 
about five years, and no room left for any other flower. 
Of course this never can happen, because other plants 
are doing much the same, and nine hundred and ninety- 
nine out of every thousand seeds are killed by some 
means or other in the race, but you will see some reason 
for the various devices that are found in plants to secure 
a chance for their progeny. 
It is not enough merely to have crowds of seeds, but 
they have to be planted some way or other in suitable 
soil if they are to find any prospect of survival. 
There are two great ways in the vegetable kingdom of 
founding a family. In the first, the plant simply breaks 
off parts of itself in its own neighbourhood and founds 
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