' ' DEFENCE, NOT DEFIANCE. 117 



and baneful plants is attributable to such a cata- 

 strophe as the " Fall of Man ! " 



Such notions cannot be compared with the larger 

 views of the Creator's power and wisdom with which 

 modern science is replacing the venerated, but in 

 reality crude and even materialistic^ opinions of the 

 last century. 



Having seen that plants, as a rule, are defensive 

 and seldom predatory objects, we can better under- 

 stand that their continued existence and vegetable 

 triumph depends upon the strength of their de- 

 fences. These are of innumerable kinds ; but the 

 easiest and most effective method is the secretion of 

 some poisonous or deterrent principle by the organs 

 most liable to attack, or which are of the greatest 

 importance in the economy of the plant. 



Take the secretion of poisons, for instance, — the 

 faculty for accumulating them has brought many 

 plants within the scope of superstitious speculation. 

 Vegetable poisons are neither peculiarly the property 

 of any one order, nor even of a species. Some plants 

 have succeeded in developing them in a much higher 

 degree than others, as the Manihot, Manchineel, the 

 Sumachs, etc. Certain orders of plants have even 

 attained a high degree of security and immunity 

 from attack by the secretion of strong poison, as the 

 Enphorbiacece, represented by such intensely poison- 

 ous species as our Common Spurges, the Euphorbia 

 virosa, etc., of Africa, and E, cotinifolia in Brazil. 



