DEPENDENCE OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS 87 
the seedling itself provides for its own security in this 
all-important respect by making it impossible for the 
seed-coat to be carried upinto theair by the lengthening 
stem. 
The subject of burial and anchorage is one that is 
full of interest, and I have introduced it, not in order 
to discuss it in detail, but, as throughout these pages, 
in the hope of stimulating curiosity and inducing the 
reader to see and find out things for himself. It will 
most certainly be good for him to do so, and it will, 
almost as certainly, add something to our scanty 
knowledge of our own Flora. 
It remains for me to point out that although one 
is apt as a rule to think of pollination, seed-dispersal, 
burial and anchorage as being done for the plant, 
yet the vegetable world is not altogether devoid of the 
virtue of self-help in these matters. Self-pollination 
is of course familiar alike to  floriculturists and 
botanists ; we have had before our notice in the last 
chapter instances of self-dispersal, and in this one, 
of self-sowing and self-anchorage; we learnt in the 
second chapter that the green plant is quite indepen- 
dent of the animal world as regards food, in other 
words, that it is self-nourishing; so it appears that 
the dependence of the animal world upon the vegetable 
is vastly more vital than that of the vegetable upon 
the animal. Nevertheless, the mutual dependence of 
the two is so complete that it is far more profitable 
to realize that fact than to make an attempt at 
striking the balance. 
We have now reviewed the whole life of a plant 
in very broad outline: the anchorage and germination 
of the seed bring us to the commencement of the next 
generation, and all I need say about the latter is that 
