CHAPTER IV 
THE FACTORS OF LIFE—THE PRESERVATION OF THE 
RACE—MARRIAGE 
HE Factors of Life that provide for the con- 
tinuance and welfare of the race as distinct 
from those of the individual are but two, both in our 
own and in the vegetable world. 
Our own boys and girls grow up, go out into the 
world, marry, and in their turn rear the next genera- 
tion to take their places, and in the course of time to 
be the fathers and mothers of their grandchildren. 
Now, marriage is just as fashionable in the vege- 
table world as in ourown. Plants pass on from infancy 
to youth, and then to maturity, and the beautiful 
blossoms that we see in our hedges, meadows, and 
woods are their bridal robes, while their fruits, 
whether the dry, uninviting pods of the Wallflower or 
the tempting Apple, are, so to speak, the nurseries 
where the vegetable children are to be found, inside 
the seeds. 
This, then, is the sixth Factor of Life; in our own 
we call it Marriage, and in the plants’, Reproduction. 
I, VEGETATIVE REPRODUCTION 
I have just spoken of the seeds as the Children of 
the Vegetable World, and while all flowering plants 
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