ii6 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



development. To attack them insect forms have 

 been specialised in a thousand ways, and they carry 

 on their assaults in the most ingenious manner and 

 with the greatest hardihood. Birds and mammals in 

 countless myriads depend upon the growth of the 

 vegetable kingdom for their daily bread. 



When we remember the probability that veget- 

 able life preceded animal life in its appearance upon 

 the globe — that from lowly organised forms plants 

 have gradually been evolved to more complex 

 and highly organised types ; that in 'genera, and 

 species, and number of individuals, they have in- 

 creased and multiplied, so that when man appeared 

 they had attained their maximum development — 

 our cause for wonder at the success which has out- 

 lived the attacks of the animal kingdom, nay, which 

 has even turned its members to account, and pressed 

 them into its own service for the fertilisation of its 

 flowers and the dissemination of its seeds, is not 

 decreased ! 



A good many people who have not studied 

 plants, and who still hold the comfortable and old- 

 fashioned doctrine — unquestioned until a few years 

 ago — that all things were created for the use and 

 service of man, cannot understand why all plants 

 should not be equally useful to him. They have 

 taken refuge either in the idea that all plants do 

 actually possess some good qualities, if we only 

 knew them ; or else that the presence of poisonous 



