46 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF FLA NTS. 



expenditure of their organised material. They even 

 succeed in throwing their own foliage outside that of 

 the trees and shrubs of our forests and green lanes, 

 and thus not only get sunlight and energy first hand, 

 but are also the first to be served with carbonic 

 acid from the atmosphere. 



When we remember that such plants make use 

 of the huge forest -trees to achieve these important 

 individual ends, and that they would not have 

 attained the positions we find them in unless high 

 woody trees had acquired their present magnitude 

 first, our admiration for the methods adopted by 

 them increases. The mere statement of this fact 

 carries with it to the mind of the botanist the know- 

 ledge that such successful climbing habits have been 

 acquij'ed. The devices thus developed undoubtedly 

 partake of the character we should call sagacious if 

 animals had displayed them. What shall we term 

 them when they are possessed by plants ? 



Look at our English green lanes, for instance. 

 Notwithstanding the sturdy hawthorn hedges are so 

 durable in trunk and branches (which latter, by 

 their close compressment, and armed with sharpest 

 of thorns, — whence " quick "- thorn, — seem well 

 able to take care of themselves), — in spite of the 

 dense closeness of such shrubs and the little light 

 allowed to fall within, they are beaten in the 

 competition for vegetable existence. Brambles of 

 several species grow in and out by means of their 



