PROTECTION 37 
forgets that the object to be obtained is perfection, 
the greatest and highest good for her children as a 
whole, each in its own proper place—vegetable, animal, 
or human. So she always wants the best plant, the 
best animal, and the best man to have a good innings, 
treating all, good bad or indifferent, alike, with uncom- 
promising justice, the best being the one that in 
accordance with his capabilities contributes the most, 
not to his own, but to the common good. Money 
and wealth of one sort or another may do much to 
help her, but no amount of “the purple” is of any 
value in comparison with a well-balanced mind and a 
trained intellect in a healthy body. 
We know nothing whatever about mind, intellect, 
or brains in the vegetable world, not even enough to 
be quite sure that there are none, but the subject of 
mutual competition provides ample opportunity for 
the use of our own. There, are for example, what I may 
call the big bullying leaves of such low-growing plants 
as the Hoary Plantain, which is a terrible nuisance 
on many a lawn. Its rosette of large oval flat leaves 
simply kills out everything that it covers, and prevents 
the successful germination of any seeds that may 
chance to be in the soil beneath. 
Then there are the plants that climb by one means 
or another. Prickles, for example, are useful not only 
for keeping off hungry animals with soft and tender 
mouths, but also as organs of support, and the long 
weak stems of such plants as the Cleavers could hardly 
scramble about a hedge as they do were it not for the 
small hooked prickles with which they are beset, 
although for this end the leaves are useful too as 
anchors or supports. 
Twining is another way in which such plants as 
