LIFE HISTORIES OF FAMILIAR PLANTS 



At first the farmer was lenient ; he found the 

 weeds growing apace, and bundled them outside 

 the gate into the lane on the rubbish heap. Now, 

 if there is one spot on the earth that the camo- 

 mile loves, it is a rubbish heap. There it will 

 hold up its blossoms to the sunlight from early- 

 June until the end of October, or even November. 

 So presently that rubbish heap exhibited to 

 passers-by quite a glorious display of white 

 and yellow blooms, and, although school children 

 treated them unmercifully, the plants flourished, 

 and never failed to show an ample store of 

 blossoms. 



The following year, for some reason, the farmer 

 neglected his field entirely, and the camomile, 

 spying out the land from the top of the rubbish 

 heap, was not slow to recognise its opportunity. 

 That, at all events, is my conclusion. I have 

 endeavoured to show you a small corner of it 

 on Plate i. 



In the sunlight the field presented a veritable 

 sea of daisy blooms. There they stood, thou- 

 sands of plants, with branches two or three feet 

 in height, and all more or less covered with blos- 

 soms ; they held the field, no other plant growing 

 amongst them. It is true that some straggling 

 and sickly-looking groundsel, and still more sickly- 

 looking dock, may have been found low down, 

 but their days were numbered. This, indeed, was 

 a plain case of ^^ survival of the fittest" ; for this 

 wild camomile weed comes of a very dominant 

 family of plants, a family that stands at the head 



