198 LIVING PLANTS 



portunity for germination and perish without 

 feeling conscious life; ]3ut many others do 

 start and attain some size only to be starved 

 and smothered out of existence. 

 Illustrative The condition of the plant world ma^^ be 



similes likened to the American struggle for riches ; 



a very few become millionaires, a small mi- 

 nority attain financial independence, but the 

 great majority die without knowing the com- 

 forting security of a competence. It has 

 become customary to speak of this over- 

 whelming failure to attain a favorable posi- 

 tion in the world as a warfare, and to some 

 extent the term is applicable; it is an un- 

 organized warfare, the fighting of a mob 

 where there is no leadership, or to select a yet 

 better simile, the frantic efforts of individuals 

 under the excitement of a panic where action 

 is controlled by the single desire to find per- 

 sonal safety. Darwin's striking phrase, "the 

 struggle for existence," which has been so 

 much used, and also greatly abused, seems 

 applicable enough when we think that for 

 each plant that attains normal development 

 thousands perish. As in the panic, it is the 

 strongest ones, or those having most advant- 

 ageous positions, or who are most apt in 

 adapting themselves to passing conditions, 

 that survive ; and in this sense Herbert Spen- 

 cer's twin phrase, the "survival of the fittest" 



