Plants and tJieir Ways in South Africa 



rocks and change them into soil, so that one dainty pink-and- 

 white Crassula which grows on our hillsides rejoices in the 

 name Saxifraga^ the rock breaker. 



It would be difficult to say where plants are not found ; on 

 the heights of the Drakensberg, and even higher ranges, flowers 

 blossom and die, where no eyes but their Maker's behold their 

 beauty. Plants are found, beautifully white and delicate, deep 

 down in the darkest mines. They are able to withstand the 

 heat of boiling springs, and explorers from the frozen Antarctic 

 return with mosses and lichens. Germs of plants kept in 

 liquid air for six months at a temperature of — 190° have suffered 



no injury, while others have 

 remained for ten hours in a 

 bath of liquid hydrogen, 60° 

 colder still, and have then 

 come forth and flourished. 

 Plants are quite at home on 

 cheese and canned fruit, and 

 an old shoe cast upon a 

 refuse-heap may boast its 

 botanic garden. These are 

 the moulds, and against them 

 the housekeeper is waging 

 constant warfare. 



Some plants are so small 

 that the sharpest eyes cannot 

 see them without powerful 

 microscopes. Of these, some 

 grow in the human body better than anywhere else. We call 

 them germs. Several kinds grow on the teeth and cause 

 their decay, unless the teeth are carefully brushed. One 

 kind, which passes part of its life in impure milk or water, 

 lodges in the throat and causes diphtheria ; and another 

 produces enteric fever, so that eternal vigilance is the price 

 of health. 



Others of these minute plants are as useful as some are 

 harmful. When the housekeeper is mixing ''sponge" for 

 bread, she is putting in as she stirs germs known as yeast 



Fig. i.^ — Common mould {Mncor mticedo) • 

 I. An entire plant with six sporangia in dif- 

 ferent stages of development (strongly mag- 

 nified), il. Single sporangium with spores 

 ^ (X 200). (From Thome' and Bennett's 

 " Structural and Physiological Kotany.") 



