PART III 



A WIDE WORLD OF PLANT-LIFE 



I — Names and Natures 



We will think a little now about the immense numbers 

 and varieties of Flowering Plants that are in the world. 



Though the great mass of them are made, as we have 

 seen, after one general plan — with Roots, Stems, Leaves, 

 Flowers — yet there is every kind of difference between 

 one and another. 



Look around in any garden where you may happen 

 to be, and see how many kinds may be discovered almost 

 at a glance; how many different trees, how many 

 different shrubs, how many different smaller plants, 

 what quantities of little weeds. And if it is so in one 

 garden, or in one place, what must it not be in the 

 Earth as a whole? 



We may, indeed, picture our Earth as a vast Garden, 

 with rich beds and borders of flowers, with woods and 

 forests, and with dry and sandy parts where few things 

 can grow. 



You might come across a man who has given his 

 entire life to the study of plants ; and you would find 

 that he feels he has only begun to understand a very 

 little of their extraordinary numbers and kinds, their 

 ways of growing, their behaviour, their history. The 



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