24 NEW ZEALAND PLANTS. 
are equipped in some special manner for occupying the soil at the 
expense of others. A species that can rapidly reproduce itself from 
seed, or by suckers, creeping stems, and the like, has a great advan- 
tage over one of slower propagating-power, and will soon smother 
it out by force of numbers alone. Some plants have large leaves 
which they flatten against the ground, and so occupy at once more 
than their share of the soil. Others have a peculiar taste, making 
them objectionable to snails, slugs, or insects, and so triumph over 
plants liable to the attacks of such animals. But there is no need 
to multiply instances; any one interested can search for examples, 
and a most fascinating quest it is. The advantages in some cases 
are so small as not to be appreciable by the observer; but, how- 
ever slight the benefit, the plant possessing it must conquer in the 
long-run. 
In nature this strife between plants is always in progress — a 
silent but nevertheless a deadly conflict. The calm aisles of a forest 
are a battlefield where the trees, shrubs, and more lowly plants strive 
for the mastery, while at the same time the forest itself wages inces- 
sant war with the adjoining grassland—the one or the other aided 
by climatic changes, an abundant rainfall favouring the forest and 
drier conditions the grassland. 
Speaking generally, the “struggle ”’ is not so much a physical 
one between plant and plant, but rather is it a competition for 
light, heat, moisture, and nutritive salts. The matter, in fact, 
resolves itself largely into a struggle for food— and here again 
the human simile is not far-fetched. 
When the general conditions governing a plant-community are 
known, it might quite well be thought that those conditions affecting 
individually the various members of the community are also known. 
No conclusion could be more false. Hach species has, as already 
stated, its special home, which may be called its growing-place. Now, 
no two species of a community have exactly the same growing- 
place—the more alike are their growth-forms, the more alike their 
growing-place ; and the converse holds good also. Thus each species 
is under special conditions of its own with regard to moisture, 
light, heat, &c., and it is these conditions which must be known 
before a plant can truly tell its story. The New Zealand brooms 
(species of Carmichaelia), with their long roots deep down into soil 
that is wet, are in a very different environment to that of a short- 
