human race. You must seek the flowers on their 
native heath and treat them as friends and 
equals. Too often is the human creature in- 
clined to look upon members of the vegetable 
kingdom as things apart from the world of life— 
insensate beings which can be cut down and 
trampled without offense—mere “growths,” 
more akin to earth and stone than to himself. 
As a matter of fact, among the many forms of 
matter which exist on this earth of ours, the only 
clear-cut division is between the organic and the 
inorganic. ‘The primary characteristic which 
distinguishes a living creature from inanimate 
objects about it is, in the words of Arthur 
Dendy, its power of “reacting toward its envi- 
ronment in such a manner as to conduce to its 
own well-being; of controlling not only its own 
behaviour but also the behaviour alike of its 
fellow creatures and of inanimate objects, in its 
own interests, thereby maintaining its own posi- 
tion in the universal struggle for existence.” 
If this, then, is the one characteristic which 
distinguishes all terrestrial life, it follows that 
all creatures from the unicellular protoza to man 
himself are intimately related, are all part and 
[12] 
