248 PLANT LIFE 
out from the parent plant with the scantiest 
supplies of ready-made nutriment. Hence, 
on germination, they must quickly begin to 
make their own living. 
Both methods have proved successful in 
different lines. The advantage of small seeds 
lies in the number of offspring produced, 
and in the ease with which their dispersal is 
ensured. Of course, it is inevitably accom- 
panied by great mortality—a waste in so far 
as the individuals are concerned, but by no 
means necessarily so from the point of view 
of the race. 
Parasites generally (though not invariably) 
produce huge quantities of small seeds. The 
profitable result is sufficiently obvious, for 
the individual chances of success cannot, at 
best, be very great—a species that relied on few 
seeds would, in the majority of cases, be placed 
at a disadvantage, inasmuch as the conditions 
of successful development can only be seldom 
realised. Every unsuccessful individual would 
naturally be exterminated, and thus, with a 
scanty progeny the race itself might easily 
die out. Moreover, the advantage of big 
seeds is less in the case of a parasite than in 
that of ordinary plants, because if a seed 
secures a lodgment enabling the embryo to 
attack a suitable host, nutrition in abundance 
is ready to hand. But for those that fail 
to reach a host, no stock of nutrition, however 
great, would be of any real avail. 
It matters little in what direction we cast 
