SOME POSSIBILITIES. 



259 



Other than through the agency of artificial fertilization. Nature, working 

 along the lines of that rigid economy that marks her every action, has thrown 

 the energy required for the production of seed, into the development of the 

 tubers, which are furnished with buds for the perpetuation of a given typ« 

 which the seed could not do. 



So far as we know, nature never did produce a vegetable fit for developed 

 man to eat, but in every class there were the possibilities of the greatest use- 

 fulness, when, or where, their uses were required. To reproduce is nature's 

 work; to develop or educate was a duty imposed on man. 



In the climate of Sweden, where there are but nine weeks of spring, sum- 

 mer and autumn, the active principle of growth is so intense during that short 

 period that their meadows yield two crops of the most nutritious grass, and 

 their gardens two crops of the most delicate and delicious vegetables. Do not 

 understand me to say that they can take seeds grown in a more southerly 

 clime and get such results, at first ; they cannot, but by slow stages the plants 

 have become adapted to localities where rapid growth is required, until the 

 results are as stated. 



On the contrary, seeds grown in Denmark will, if planted in a more 

 southern locality, make for a season a much more rapid growth, but a second 

 or third generation will take the full time allowance for reproduction. 



Many plants which are annual and herbaceous in temperate climates, 

 become perennial and ligneous in the tropics, and the reverse, a fact that is 

 the cause of some strange freaks in plant variation. Take as an example, the 

 common castor oil plant, which is here grown as an annual, and now produces 

 its seed freely; when first introduced, it was a tall growing plant, and rarely 

 ripened but the fruit of its first flowers. By saving the seed for a few gener- 

 ations, it adapted itself to the climate, became more dwarf in habit, its seeds 

 grew smaller, and the plant is now extensively grown for commercial purposes. 

 The same species in Africa grows to an immense size, and is perennial in habit, 

 while its trunk is as woody as most of the forest trees. 



A better illustration, from the fact of its being one in which we are more 

 interested, may be found in the lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus). In South 

 America, where it is indigenous, it is a tender herbaceous perennial, a most 

 rampant grower, and, having fully nine months to perfect its fruit, it can 

 ramble at leisure without fear of frost. When spring time comes, as it does 

 everywhere, from the crown of its immense fleshy tubers, not unlike the 

 Chinese yam, som eof which weigh fully fifty pounds each, there shoot forth 

 numerous tender stems, not unlike the perennial Ipomoeas, which make a 

 rapid growth, and, twining over other vegetable forms, becomes an impene- 

 trable mass. 



Like most other twining plants, it follows the sun in its course, which is 

 there from right to left, directly opposite from the natural direction of twining 

 plants north of the equator, which accounts for the difficulty experienced here 

 in getting them to climb the poles. Habit says, go to the left,' the sun says, 

 follow me and go to the right, the result is it will not willingly do either. 



The farther removed from its southern home, the more rapid its growth 

 and the more dwarf its habit, until it reaches the limit of growth or time it has 



