CHAPTER XII 
CONCLUSION 
HE reader will remember that in previous 
chapters I have referred more than once or 
twice to the co-operative principle upon which the 
Scheme of Creation is founded: I am not about to 
inflict that subject upon him again except to point out 
the indispensable necessity for co-operation on the 
part of Nature-students too. 
I remarked in Chapter IX. that anything like a 
comprehensive comparative study of the life-history 
of our wild Cranesbills and Erodiums would be a very 
large order indeed, and that the fourth and the last 
two factors of life, Protection, Reproduction and the 
Care of the Children afford an absolutely limitless 
scope, including what is easy, difficult, very difficult 
and altogether impossible within the capabilities and 
lifetime of one human being. 
I think I may claim to have justified, in the inter- 
vening pages, both these assertions and thus to have 
supported, were any support needed, the plea for 
co-operation. 
When, in the first chapter, I laid down three golden 
rules, I said that I should have to refer again in this 
one to the first of them. 
It was right in that place to emphasize the 
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